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Can we just act like grown-ups? Gnaw.

Randy Essex
Here's a sampling of gummy adult supplements now being offered.

Be good boys and girls and take your candy.
Have you visited the supplement aisle lately? We are witnessing the gummyization of adult America.
I just noticed this development, but the Internet tells me this has been building for a couple of years.
Adult supplements now include gummy multivitamins, gummy fiber (subject of the first adult gummy TV ad I’ve seen), gummy calcium, gummy “CholesterWell” and, of course, gummy fish oil. Clearly, the world has desperately needed gummy fish oil, which comes in orange-lemon and strawberry-banana flavors.
Is it that Flintstones kids have grown up and couldn’t possibly take a vitamin that’s not sweet? That ethanol hasn’t been successful enough and, with soda sales dropping, Big Ag needed a new outlet for all that corn it’s producing? We just didn’t have enough ways to consume high-fructose corn syrup.
(Naturally, since gummy supplements bring us a new sweetened product, we also have non-GMO, eco-friendly, non-nut, gluten-free Smarty Pants gummies, with no artificial sweeteners, flavors, colors or preservatives.)
Oh, heck, let’s not get fussy and just roll with it.
What other products might be good in gummy?
Gummy bourbon — thus combining two of the hottest trends in adult consumption?
Gummy aspirin and Pepto Bismol (strawberry flavored) for the morning after?
Can we do gummy broccoli and peas and carrots?
How about gummy backpacks? Out for a hike, you could carry fruit and water inside a pack made of something like Clif Shot Blok energy chews. After eating the fruit and lightening the water weight, you could nibble away at the backpack for fuel.
Heck, gummy water bottles.
The possibilities seem nearly endless, but some things just wouldn’t be right, such as gummy Viagra. That’s got to be hard candy.
Curious about reaction to this, I turned to Facebook and asked my friends if they had noticed and what they thought about it. These are, of course, highly intelligent people mostly in their 40s and 50s, so I thought they would have a nice, grounded perspective.
“I bought gummy vitamins because I feel like I’m 6 when I eat one,” Hugh said. “And then I want to ride my high-handlebar banana-seat bike to the store to look at MAD magazine.”
Cindy said it’s Mary Poppins Syndrome — “A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.”
Yeah, I thought so.
A couple friends, though, made a valid point about why this might be about more than just sugar:
“We need gummies because adult vitamins are big honking things that gag people and taste awful,” Kathy said.
Another Kathy elaborated: “A large percentage of the populace has physical trouble swallowing pills, and I’m assuming that gummy pills are a solution to that. My elderly mom, for example, does a lot of her supplements in gummy formulation.”
That’s a good point and a practical reason for gummies. In addition, I like to avoid hard-packed tablets because I’ve heard that they often pass through our systems without breaking down.
Still, I suspect that most purchasers are more like Hugh.
One former colleague — I told her I would call her “Sugar” for the column — nailed it, I think: “It’s like having candy for breakfast without feeling guilty.”
So how about an all-in-one gummy about the size of a golf ball? FiberViteOmega3Gummy + Calcium.
Something that big would be impossible to mix up here in Colorado with your THC-infused gummies. Which, we hear, aren’t kids’ stuff.

Randy Essex is editor of the Post Independent.


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