Q & A

But Henry's brother Joseph was determined the company would survive. He introduced an irresistible array of treats: fruit-flavoured pastilles, light, bubbly chocolate bars and sugar-coated chocolate drops. Today, Rowntree's is celebrating its 150th birthday as a multi-million pound firm, owned by international superbrand Nestle.

Rowntree's, and companies like it, revolutionised their industry. Before they came along, confectionery was marketed as an expensive medicinal product. Customers bought lozenges of spices and sugar to ease sore throats or aid digestion. Most sweets - like fudge, nut brittle or honey-glazed fruits - were made at home.

Cheap, plentiful sugars, new manufacturing methods and powerful marketing changed all that. The average American now consumes over 11kg of candy each year, fuelling a $147 billion global industry. As consumption has increased, the illnesses caused by overeating - obesityThe medical condition of being very overweight. There are many ways of measuring this, including a BMI of 30 or more. (You can work out your BMI by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in metres squared.), heart disease and diabetesA medical condition causing there to be too much sugar in the blood. - have become deadly epidemicsA widespread disease. A pandemic is an epidemic which has spread across the entire world..

In art and culture, sweets came to represent a forbidden, decadent world. In TchaikovskyPyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky also wrote the world-famous ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker.'s ballet, The Nutcracker, a young heroine is transported into a dreamlike world of sweets, where a sugar-plum fairy lives in a castle made of marzipan.

Modern adverts associate Ferrero Rocher chocolates with extravagant dinner parties in grand embassies. Dark, handsome strangers take on villains, and cross deserts and mountains to deliver boxes of Milk TrayIn the 1860s, boxes of chocolates cost the equivalent of a few months' wages: presenting one to a woman was tantamount to a marriage proposal. Rowntree's Black Magic chocolate boxes, sold at a price affordable to all, changed that. Milk Tray is a popular Cadbury's boxed chocolate..

But often, the candy dreamland is not as sweet as it appears. For Hansel and Gretel, a gingerbread house with windows of clear sugar turned out to be a murderous witch's lair. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Turkish delight is symbolic of temptation. After just one bite the young, impressionable Edmund becomes obsessed with the enchanted sweet - and his insatiable appetite for its deliciousness leads him to a path of betrayal and sin.

Not so Smartie

Many people think Edmund's story has a more literal lesson. Sweets are junk food: they do nothing but rot teeth and make us fat. The constant munching of these bright, sugar-packed treats is a sign of gluttonyExcessive overeating. In Catholicism, it is included as one of the seven deadly sins. and excess.

The most enjoyable things in life, however, are often bad for you. And many think a bit of sugar is nothing compared to the moments of delight people get from confectionery. They may be bad for us, but the joy of sweets is worth the sin.

How unhealthy are sweets for me really? Sweets and chocolates contain few nutrients, and are high in sugar and fat. But some people think they are unfairly demonised. Some foods that are regarded as nutritious can also be unhealthy. Lots of people who might refuse to eat candy, for example, would happily drink smoothies or eat breakfast cereal - products that can contain just as much sugar as a portion of sweets.

So it's okay for me to eat them? The secret lies in moderation and balance. Eating a family pack of Skittles three times a week is very different to an occasional chocolate bar as a treat. But that doesn't mean there aren't hurdles to keeping healthy. Choice of treats - from cookies to jelly babies - is now bigger than ever, and studies show that portion sizes have become larger, too.