Halloween is the biggest candy-selling holiday of the year, and even though some clowns and witches settle for eating candy corn and circus peanuts today, the top 10 favorites are chocolate-based. (Snickers, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Kit Kat are most popular, according to industry groups.)

Of course, everyone knows that candy bars are always in style. After all, they're practically a food group unto themselves, appearing in everything from vending machines to restaurant desserts and looming large in popular culture for more than a century, ever since a fellow named Milton Hershey started selling milk chocolate bars in 1900.

Their popularity, however, goes beyond one holiday or even one nation. New evidence seems to suggest that candy bars are the greatest food item in the universe.

First, there are the ingredients. Candy bars represent all major components of the modern diet -- sugar, fat, salt, chocolate -- making them a complete meal. For those who insist on consuming protein, many bars even come with nuts.

Then, there's the Goo Goo Cluster phenomenon. What product could survive 90 years of marketing under such a name other than one made of chocolate, peanuts, caramel and marshmallow? If sliced bread were called Goo Goo Loaves, it would have failed decades ago.

Finally, there's the Mix-in Theorem. It holds that only the greatest food in the universe, when crushed and lined up in little bins on a white counter top, could cause people to spend $4 for a scoop of ice cream. A corollary states that only the greatest food in the universe, when crushed and stirred into cheesecake batter, could cause people to order dessert after gorging themselves on dinner.

For more examples of the ever-growing body of evidence demonstrating candy bars' superiority to all other foods, read on ...

AMAZING candy bar facts!

Halloween is the top candy holiday in the United States. Snickers is the most popular Halloween candy.

Milk chocolate was invented in 1875 by Henry Nestlé, a maker of evaporated milk, and Daniel Peter, a chocolate maker. Nestlé sells a Peter's line of chocolates commercially.

To promote the Baby Ruth bar in 1923, Curtiss Candy Co. founder Otto Schnering hired barnstormers to drop thousands of the candies, each equipped with its own tiny parachute, over Pittsburgh. The stunt was so successful, Schnering had it repeated in 40 states.

Accustomed to regular overseas shipments of milk chocolate during World War I, returning soldiers fueled a "candy bar boom" in the 1920s.

Milky Way bars were originally marketed in 1923 as "a chocolate malted drink in a candy bar."

The Snickers bar, launched nationally in 1930, was named after a favorite Mars family horse.

In 2001, Americans consumed about 3.1 billion pounds of chocolate. Retail sales of chocolate last year were $13.1 billion.

The companies that sell the largest amount of chocolate in the United States are, in order: Hershey Foods Corp., Mars Inc., Nestlé, Russell Stover.

Hershey's biggest customer is Wal-Mart stores and its subsidiaries, which accounted for 17 percent of sales in 1999.

Chocolate manufacturers use 40 percent of the world's almonds, 20 percent of the world's peanuts and 8 percent of the world's sugar.