An UNREAL Chemistry Class

Everyone loves candy, we even have national holidays like Halloween where most people indulge in copious amounts of sugary treats. But do we really know what we are eating? Three girls here at Suffolk – Matilda Ivarsson, Marie Elisa Gonzalez and Stephanie Dulcey – were intrigued by UNREAL Candy, a new company that is revolutionizing the world of candy. 

UNREAL Candy is a company that has “unjunked candy” as they put it. They are taking out all the stuff that’s bad, although most of us probably didn’t even know they existed. Instead, the founders travelled the world to find replacements. 

These three international ladies – Ivarsson from Sweden, Gonzalez from Venezuela and Dulcey from Colombia – were intrigued by this company and decided to focus their Chemistry 103 project on it. Going into the project the girls thought that everyone would definitely love chemistry more if we could focus the project on candy! “We learned so much about the food we eat in this class,” said Dulcey with an adorable Colombian Spanish accent. “We learned about chemicals like additives, GMO’s, and preservatives. We then connected this to what we knew about UNREAL Candy.” The three girls are Public Relations majors, and Dr. Lewis (professor of Chem 103) likes her students to include something from their major to include in their project. The girls decided to create a focus group where they blindfolded 10 people and gave them samples of commercial candy brands and samples of UNREAL Candy. The girls created a press release, but the most impressive part of their project was the video.

The video features snip bits of the natural ingredients UNREAL Candy uses and how similar the candy tastes compared to the commercial brand. It also shows how people from around the world taste it and surely liked it by saying “Get UNJUNKED, Get UNREAL”

Ivarsson, Gonzalez and Dulcey now feel very excited to spread UNREAL Candy’s message. They believe that people need to be more aware of what they eat because not everything is as good as the manufacturer’s lead us to believe.