The annual Sweets and Snacks Expo rolled into Chicago last week, filling the usually sober McCormick Place convention center with giant posters, plush mascots, branded race cars, and smiling salespeople distributing bite-sized samples in pleated paper cups. There were chocolate bars, chocolate truffles, marshmallows, jelly beans, gummies, regular Skittles, dehydrated Skittles, crunchy fruit, frozen fruit, nut butter, actual nuts, snack mixes, popcorn, energy drinks, protein bars, aggressively strong mints, aggressively sour sourballs, aggressively Flamin’ Hot cheese puffs, jerkies made from the flesh of all sorts of animals and a few fruits and vegetables besides, and chips of every persuasion: potato, corn, plantain, sweet potato, beet, bean, parsnip, dragonfruit, and carrot.
Photo: Getty Images