One recent morning as I sat down to breakfast, I took a hearty bite out of my toast, and ouch. Ouch! My lower canine tooth felt quite sensitive. Was that throbbing in my gums? Could I have a cavity? If memory served, it sure felt like it.
Maybe it shouldn’t have come as a surprise; my nightstand drawer is filled with tins, jars, and pouches of gummies that resemble and taste like my favorite childhood candies. These sweets not only contain sugar but are often coated with the stuff.
My personal stash is mostly for sleep, but, being an equal opportunist, there are also ones that promise to deliver energy, bliss, and … I’m sure I’m forgetting a few. Oh, right: focus!
Mine are all cannabis-driven, but gummies of the non-cannabis variety have also gained popularity of late. Everything from better skin to metabolism control comes in a gummy. Kim Kardashian even launched ones for vaginal health. I remember when skin-care creator Scott-Vincent Borba introduced his Skin Balance Gummi Bears in the early aughts. Not long after, I discovered Olly Good Skin gummies, of which I would regularly pop sometimes a half-dozen in one sitting, as if I were in a movie theater hoovering a pack of Haribos. Hurrah! Adults can eat candy again! Even better, it’s good for us!
Or were they? How many grams of sugar were in these morsels?
When cannabis became legalized in most states by 2016, dispensaries soon followed, popping up faster than you can say “reefer madness.” With a small history of paranoia from the few times I’d inhaled in college, I was perplexed by this new real estate, holding firmly to my Klonopin, which, along with the occasional swig of my husband’s ZzzQuil, usually did the trick of lulling me into unconsciousness.
Then one evening last summer, a friend introduced us to cannabis gummies. Everyone has a friend like this—the one whose opinions you trust on all things—so we bit. And we’ve been biting ever since. My husband and I have become proud potheads, proselytizing for its soporific benefits to anyone who’d listen.
And then, the ouch.
No matter the target, the average amount of sugar in a single health- or wellness-related gummy is two to eight grams. And while ingesting a few is unlikely to lead to weight gain, it isn’t doing much for the health of our molars and incisors.
Everything from better skin to metabolism control comes in a gummy.
“People over 50 don’t usually get cavities,” says New York cosmetic dentist Marc Lowenberg, of LLK Dental. “But we’ve started to see an increase because of this gummy craze.”
When it comes to gummies, cannabis or otherwise, I am a purist. Even stevia grosses me out, so I’m certainly not interested in an aspartame or agave version. But at a time when we’re all trying to lower our sugar intake, might it not be wise for these brands, cannabis or otherwise, to consider using less than a spoonful?
“We believe in giving people options,” says Kristi Palmer, co-founder and president of Kiva Confections. “Some of our customers love the extra sugar coating on our Camino Sours, which also have a higher potency, while others prefer our classic Camino gummies without the sugar coating.”
That latter would be me, and, coincidentally, those Caminos taste very much like the aforementioned Ollys.
There are other ways to obtain the bedtime high and save the teeth—buds, tinctures, tonics, vapes, and pills, including 1906’s Sleep! plant-based pills, my current go-to.
In time, I’ll likely go back to the candy store, but for now, it’s amazing what the words “You need a root canal” can do for your resolve.
Jane Larkworthy, the longtime beauty director at W magazine, is a Massachusetts-based writer
