Caramels

Food · Other · Food, Typed Supps

Sugar, butter and milk cooked together. Cook it longer and hotter and a chewy caramel becomes a hard one.

Stage by stage

Intake (Prolonged contact with teeth): Soft caramels cling to enamel for minutes; hard ones dissolve slowly. Contact time drives decay risk more than sugar quantity.
Digestion (Sucrose split, fat delayed): Sucrose needs one hydrolysis step; milk fat and protein slow gastric emptying somewhat.
Bloodstream (Fast glucose rise): Glucose absorbs quickly and fructose is routed to the liver.
Fat (Largely saturated): Butter and condensed milk make the fat predominantly saturated, absorbed over several hours.

Time to effect

Under an hour: Blood glucose rises within about 30 minutes; mouth pH stays depressed for 20 to 40 minutes after the last of it goes.

Allergens

Contains: Milk. May contain: Gluten, Eggs, Soya, Tree nuts. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.

Eating patterns

Fits: Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher. Depends on the product: Low-FODMAP, Gluten-free.

Satiety

89 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — low. Modelled from the Holt et al. (1995) measurements.

Cost band

Mid — roughly £4 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.

Key nutrients

Added sugar
Saturated fat

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 387
Protein: 2.5g
Carbohydrate: 74.5g
of which sugars: 54.6g
Fat: 11.4g
of which saturated: 8.7g
Fibre: 1.5g
Sodium: 250mg

Food vs. supplement

Not applicable. This is confectionery, and the honest comparison is with other sweets rather than with any nutrient it contributes.

Kitchen tip

The whole texture range is a thermometer decision: around 118 to 120C for chewy, above 145C for hard. If teeth are the concern, a hard caramel eaten in one go is briefer contact than a soft one worked on for several minutes.

Common myth

“Sugar is sugar — a caramel is no worse for teeth than any other sweet.” In reality: Contact time is what matters for decay. A caramel holds fermentable sugar against enamel for minutes, where a drink is gone in seconds — the same amount of sugar, a considerably longer acid attack.