Sweet Things [Quiz #10]

Answers here

1. Sweetness is one of the five basic tastes for which humans have receptors. What are the others? [half point for getting three, full point for getting all four]

2. What country, producing about 30 million tons a year, was the world’s leading sugar producer in 2007, just beating second-place India?

3. Which pop superstars united on the 1996 duet “One Sweet Day,” which, despite being called “melisma throwing up a pound of Splenda into the face of schmaltz” by Entertainment Weekly writer Michael Slezak, continues as of 2008 to hold the record for the most weeks (16) atop Billboard’s Hot 100?

4. Which artificial sweetener held a near monopoly on the US market from its introduction in 1957 until the early 1980s? Name both the brand name and its primary ingredient. [half point each]

5. What pastime is sometimes referred to as the “sweet science”?

6. What is the name of the Sweet 16-like party held by girls celebrating their 15th birthdays in Mexico and some other Latin American countries?

7. Place the following sweets in order of when they were first marketed, earliest to latest. [half a point if one is out of order, full point if all are in the correct order]
(a) Hershey bar; (b) SweeTarts (c) Reese's Pieces (d) Red Hots (e) Life Savers

8. What typically replaces ordinary sugar (sucrose) as a sweetener in commercially processed soft drinks and other foods in the United States and Canada? Why, aside from geographic farming patterns, is this not the case in most other countries? [half point each]

9. What series of teenage-oriented novels ended in 2003 with the publication of the 152nd book, Sweet 18?

10. Swee’Pea was a character in which comic and cartoon series?