Candy and chocolate come in so many different sizes and varieties, it's difficult to know what you're getting.
And while candy is obviously not a health food, sometimes you've got to live a little.
But we were curious. Candy and chocolate come in so many different sizes and varieties, it's difficult to know what you're getting. So we did some investigating to see what 200 calories—a.k.a. the size of a reasonable snack—of some of the most popular candies really looks like. We used the regular-sized options (like what you see at the grocery store) wherever possible—so for chocolate, we used full-sized rather than "fun-sized" bars. In cases where calorie count per piece was not clearly listed on the back of the label (as with M&Ms and Skittles), we did some quick math to approximate what 200 calories would look like.
As a general rule, chocolate candies tend to have more calories in them per serving than the non-chocolate ones—meaning you'd get less bang for your caloric buck. You'd get less than a full-sized Snickers bar, or just over 21 pieces of Sour Patch Kids. But if you're more of a chocolate person than a sour candy person, then that point is moot.
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Something to keep in mind: We found that sometimes the candy we purchased had a different nutritional breakdown than what was listed online on the manufacturer's website. For example, the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup candy that we shot said it had 220 calories per package, while the websitesays it only has 210 calories per package. Same thing with M&M's—the package we bought said it had 230 calories, while the equivalent package is listed online as having 240 calories. So be sure to double-check the label when you're buying if you're concerned about calorie count, since there were some discrepancies out there.
We also found that package size occasionally affected how many calories an individual piece of candy or chocolate has. For example, a regular package of Twix, which comes with two bars, has 250 calories (so, 125 calories per bar). But in a Twix 4 To Go package, each of the four bars has 110 calories. Those bars are slightly smaller than what you'd get in a traditional package of Twix. There were others that were consistently the same size and nutritional profile, no matter what sized package they were in (we're looking at you, Jelly Bellies!)
Watch the video above to see how your favorite candy measures up.
