I was thinking about holiday-related candy lately. Which do you prefer, Halloween candy or Christmas candy? I guess it depends on whether you're the type of person who would want to eat a chocolate Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer or something called Nurse Hatchet's Body Parts Gummy Candy.

The latter is available at Candy Crate, an online store where you can get a ton of Halloween candy, including Pumpkin Whirly Pops, Boneheads Fruit-Flavored Skulls, Halloween Bubble Gum Coins, and Oozing Eyeballs. Sure, it's too late for tonight's Halloween activities, but that doesn't mean you can't have them delivered next week and gross out your friends and family then.

Ah, one of the eternal questions, right up there with "Do you really have to wait an hour after eating before you swim?" and "How many licks does it take to get the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?"

And now the question is answered at the Scientific American Web site. The old wisdom warned that you shouldn't swallow gum because it takes the body seven years to digest it. But the folks at Scientific American have investigated and the answer is ... after the jump!

Medical benefits from gum? You better believe it! Studies show that gum chewing is can help fight the development of cavities by stimulating the production of acid-neutralizing saliva. Xylitol, a common gum ingredient, has been shown to have more specific cavity-fighting properties, as well. It can also, as noted above, help to fight bad breath.

Gums available in Europe and Asia have ingredients like green tea extract, calcium and other nutritional supplements that would typically be found in a vitamin pill. Some children's gums already contain Vitamin-C, for instance. In addition to replacing vitamin pills and supplements, some doctors are considering gum as an alternative to pill-forms of prescription medicines because they would make medicine so easy to "take." Of course, the overall effectiveness of such a plan has not yet been thoroughly tested, although it is known that many substances are very easily absorbed through the gums, but because gum "can contain as many as 70 ingredients" it is certainly possible for thousands of different formulations to be put together.

In an attempt to scare children into good behavior around Christmas, some parents would often tell their kids that Santa would fill their stockings with coal instead of presents on Christmas morning if they were naughty. And since the kids already knew that Santa knew just about everything, this strategy sometimes worked and the parents got a couple weeks of good behavior in winter. At least, it would work until the kids realized that their parents were putting them on about Santa delivering coal. To get back at your kids for less-than-perfect behavior this holiday season (not that we're implying that they're anything less than angelic!), you could actually give them some coal - Coal Gum. The box has 2.5 ounces of sweet, but black, gum.

In Italy, where the coal-in-stockings legend got started, parents can give their kids Carbone Dolce, or "sweet coal" as a treat on Christmas. It is basically a mixture of chocolate and puffed rice cereal that is melted together and left to harden into lumps of "coal."

Along with the check, after dinner one night last week, the waiter brought over a few stick of gum to our table. It wasn't a subtle hint that our breath needed freshening, but the restaurants way of presenting diners with an "after dinner mint" of sorts. The gum, as it turned out, was melon flavored and, though it was excellent, made me wonder what ever happened to real after dinner mints.

For years and years, it seemed as though every single restaurant either had a small basket of mints at the host/hostess stand near the front door or delivered a few mints to the table with the bill. Mints gradually faded from popularity until they were only found at a handful or family-friendly restaurants, left in the face of declining popularity to appease children. Now, those restaurants seem to only grudgingly offer toothpicks. While the mints weren't necessarily candies of the highest order, I still enjoyed them, whether peppermint, cinnamon or, on occasion, chocolate. Can we get them back, please? Melon gum is lovely, but it just doesn't provide the same satisfying conclusion to a meal.

We already know that chewing gum can help keep your breath fresh as the springtime. Chewing gum can also help to "wash" away nasty plaque and bacteria because it causes you to salivate. Now, scientists have developed a chewing gum uses the good bacteria Lactobacillus found in yogurt to kill of the decay-causing bacteria found in your mouth.

According to Dr. Andreas Reindl of BASF, "The effectiveness has been demonstrated and the first oral hygiene products containing probiotic lactobacilli are scheduled to appear in 2007."

Of course, this doesn't mean you should stop brushing your teeth, flossing, and visiting your dentist regularly.

No doubt you've seen the commercials for Orbit gum. They feature that exceptionally perky British girl and, more recently, Snoop Dog. The commercials are a bit hit-or-miss, but the gum is actually pretty good. The flavor lasts for quite some time and it has a nice texture to it. I am particularly fond of the Bubblemint flavor, which is a slightly more refreshing version of a traditional bubblegum.

I am not, however, fond of their newest flavor: lemon-lime. Although their marketing assured me that it was "Snoop's top pick!" it tastes like extra-strength Crystal Light, and the sour, sweet and artificial taste dies away quickly. Although that's a good thing in this case, it's not really a good thing in the larger scheme of gum products.

I'll stick with the more traditional flavors, although their Citrus Mint, which is orange-flavored, sounds like it would be pretty good.

The Ice Breakers Ice Cubes concept is an interesting one. In the box of gum, the individual pieces look rather like little sugar cubes, slightly sparkly and not wrapped in paper. They are dubbed "ice cubes" not only for their shape, but because they almost instantly produce a cooling sensation in the mouth. As there are other types of gum that do this, I wasn't in any hurry to try these new Cubes, until I saw the "Dragonfruit Freeze" flavor.

Dragonfruit is the name for the fruits of several species of cacti which grow in Mexico, Central and South America and Southeast Asia. The fruit has a leathery rind and flesh with a texture that is somewhat similar to a firm watermelon and tastes like a slightly sweet kiwi fruit. I was hoping for the same subtlety of flavor to come through in the gum. It didn't, but the gum was still okay.

Overall, the cooling sensation is really refreshing, especially in the summer heat. The flavor is fruity and I would have been more likely to guess "tropical" or "fruit punch" than "dragonfruit." There is a definite citrus tone. It is very pleasant, and a nice change from mintier gums, but the initial taste fades very quickly. I'd buy it again, but I wouldn't make a special trip to the store to pick some up.

Brian at Candy Addict pointed out a story that I overlooked last week. A middle school student in Pennsylvania was suspended, not for stealing a cookie, but for bringing Jolt Gum to school and sharing it with another student. Jolt Gum was described by the superintendent as "a stimulant that has no other redeeming quality." "What if the gum had been given to a student with a heart condition?" she asked. The suspension was for three days, as the school has a zero-tolerance policy on stimulants, including caffeinated sodas.

Jolt Gum has 45 mg of caffeine per serving. For comparison, consider that a Hershey's chocolate bar has 9 mg of caffeine and a 12-oz. Coke has 34 mg (Diet Coke has 45mg).

Jason applies chewed gum to a plywood backing to create his Gum Blonde masterpieces - portraits of blondes made with chewed up gum. According to his bio, Jason doesn't chew gum himself, but has a team who chews the gum for him, with his favorite texture coming from Trident. He does not use paint or dyes, relying on the "inherent" color of the gum, and mixing colors by chewing them.

Pretty impressive, I'd say.