Candy Corn, Peanuts, Salted Nut Rolls, and a Venn Diagram

When I was in the grocery store checkout, buying candy corn for National Candy Corn Day (it's coming up this weekend, you know) and the woman behind me in line mentioned if you mix candy corn and peanuts together in a bowl to pop by handfuls at a time into your mouth, they taste exactly like Salted Nut Rolls, the first thing I thought was, "What a great opportunity for reviewing Venn diagrams!"

Okay, not really.  What I really thought is, "Well, now I need to buy some Salted Nut Rolls."

I really love Salted Nut Rolls.  If it weren't for their obscene amount of calories, they'd be my favorite snack.

But, after I mixed up a batch of candy corn and peanuts (which is not bad - in fact much better than a bowl of plain candy corn - but not exactly like Salted Nut Rolls), the children had a hard time agreeing in what ways it differed from the candy bars.

So...

...we (meaning I) traced out a quick diagram...

...so we (meaning they) could explore the ways the candy and nut treats were alike and different from the candy and nut bars.

In the end, while the ingredients of the two candies were, apart from sugar, corn syrup and artificial flavoring, significantly (or maybe that was slightly) different - and the textures and looks of the two were nothing alike...

...the taste might have been quite similar, if our candy bars, which were on the stale side (despite coming straight off the shelf) had been as fresh as our candy corn and peanuts.
 
For now, hoping to avoid sugar induced comas, we've tabled the discussion until next year when, if we can obtain a fresher sampling of the candy bars, we might take up the comparison again. 

Science and math are all about persistence and accuracy, after all.  Somebody has to take the fall, and eat the sugar.