Candy Floss or Cotton Candy

Surprisingly, for a product made up almost solely of pure sugar, a typical serving size of candy floss only contains about 30 grams of sugar (about 115 calories). This is actually about 9 grams less sugar than a 12 ounce can of Coca-Cola (39 grams of sugar / 140 calories). 

Cotton Candy By I, FocalPoint,

William Morrison, a dentist from Nashville, Tennessee, was an avid inventor, and has a number of inventions to his credit. One of them is the first cotton candy (originally named Fairy Floss and named Candy Floss in the UK and Fairy Floss in Australia) machine, which he invented in 1897 in cooperation with confectioner John C. Wharton. This electric machine melted sugar and then used forced-air to push it through a wire screen. It was introduced at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, and was a big success. Thomas Patton and Josef Delarose Lascaux also claimed to invent the cotton candy machine. 

At the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, Morrison and Wharton sold approximately 68,655 boxes of their Fairy Floss at 25 cents each — a sizeable sum at the time, equivalent to roughly $6–7 today. Their total gross was around $17,163.75, which would be over $400,000 in today's money. 

 The name "cotton candy" was popularised in 1921 by Josef Lascaux, a New Orleans dentist who invented his own spun sugar machine and coined the new term. Though he never matched Morrison's commercial success, his name for the treat stuck in the USA — while the UK kept "candy floss" and Australia retained "fairy floss." 

Candy floss is known by wonderfully different names around the world. In France it is called barbe à papa ("Papa's beard"), in the Netherlands it is suikerspin ("sugar spider"), in Greece it is known as "old ladies' hair," and in China it is called "dragon's beard."

The world record for making the most candy floss (cotton candy) in 90 minutes is 204 candy flosses, achieved by Peggy Chadwick of Blackpool Pleasure Beach in Blackpool, Lancashire, England, on 31 August 2001. The attempt was part of UK Youth Week celebrations held at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. That means Chadwick averaged about 2.27 candy flosses per minute for an hour and a half straight. 

Individual threads of candy floss are actually thinner than a human hair. The spun sugar strands typically measure around 50 micrometres in diameter, compared to a human hair which is roughly 70 micrometres wide. 

Candy floss doesn't technically go off or expire — because it is almost entirely sugar, it has no ingredients that spoil. However, it slowly deflates and shrinks down into a sticky lump of sugar when exposed to humidity or air. It can actually be frozen, which extends its usable lifespan for months, and it can be eaten straight from the freezer as it doesn't freeze solid. 

National Candy Floss Day is celebrated on 7 December each year in the United States, where it is observed as National Cotton Candy Day. The origins of this food holiday are unclear, but the date has been widely recognised since at least the early 2000s.