Even in ancient times, people loved sweets. When they went searching for food, they always took something sweet along. People already knew then that something sweet was tasty and something bitter was not.
The first real sweetener that people used to give their food a sweet taste was honey. Hunters in the Stone Age gathered honey from wild bee nests. And the ancient Egyptians already had baskets full of honey bees as early as 2500 BC. Sugar as we know it today was also used very early on. As early as 3000 BC, people in India knew how to extract sugar from sugarcane. Through the Arab countries, this technique later became known in France and Spain. Image result for list of sweets from long ago
Honey and cane sugar were thus already used to sweeten things, but we still have to wait a bit for the first candy; that only came in the 16th century!! The idea of making all kinds of sweets from cane sugar arose around 1510 in the Southern Netherlands. The sugar was first heated and then a flavor was added. The German emperors had the sugar confections brought from the Southern Netherlands (now the Netherlands). They also had sugar figures made for special occasions, and tada, the first real candy! A pity for the common folk, because candy was only for the truly wealthy. Until in 1747 a German apothecary discovered that sugar could also be obtained much more cheaply from sugar beets!! Candy then became increasingly popular, and just look at how much candy there is now!!