What I was curious about was how things got this way. > Meanwhile, Bouzari told me, major U.S. manufacturers haven’t really kept up. They depend on appealing t

What I was curious about was how things got this way. > Meanwhile, Bouzari told me, major U.S. manufacturers haven’t really kept up. They depend on appealing to as broad a swath of the country’s atypically diverse population as possible—not just across racial and ethnic lines, but across the country’s many local and regional food cultures. The results are candies that tend to be highly sweet and pretty bland, forgoing flavors and textures that brands believe might alienate white Americans in particular. I get the sense that this is only part of the difference in methodology and results.