Озвученный английский онлайн текст Sweets.
For many hundreds of years some kinds of sweets have been known. Long ago, dates, figs, and nuts were chopped up, mixed with honey, and molded into pieces. But sweets of the kind we know — sweets made of sugar — are much newer. Almost no one in Europe had ever heard of sugar until about five hundred years ago, and it was very scarce for two hundred years after that. Sweet-making did not become common till sugar was plentiful.
A century ago doctors and chemists made sweet coating on badtasting pills. Then people began making sweets just for the taste of them and invented a number of different kinds.
All the sweets of today are made chiefly of sugar. Some have gelatin, corn syrup, rice crisps, nuts, raisins and other fruits added. A great many of the sweets are chocolates.
At first all sweets were made by hand. Now most of them are made by machines at big factories. Handmade sweets are rather expensive, and they are mainly bought as a present.
Americans eat more sweets, or candy, as they say, than any other people in the world (about 30 pounds of candy a person a year)!