Have you ever noticed the Tic Tac nutrition facts? It’s shocking – they have 0 fat, 0 carbs, 0 sugar. According to these numbers, Tic Tacs are just as good for you as water.?How do they do it!
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They don’t – Tic Tac nutrition facts actually operate under a nice little trick! Let me explain:
It comes down to the serving size. US federal regulations state that if a single serving contains less than 0.5?g of sugars it is allowable to express the amount of sugar in a serving as zero.
Because the Tic Tac is so small, they can put the nutrition facts as 0 because it’s nearly zero grams.
They’re still pure sugar, so buyer beware. They may appear harmless when you first look at them, but don’t be fooled – Tic Tacs are still candy disguised as a fun mint. Even the label on the front preaches that each Tic Tac “mint” is less than 2 calories.
Anyone who has even had the orange flavor Tic Tac knows that you don’t just have one. You are lucky if you don’t finish the whole container in one sitting. So it’s hard?not to see this as deceiving.
I remember the first time I noticed the “healthy” Tic Tacs. I was on a road trip picking up candy at a pitstop (typical). Much to the disappointment of my girlfriend, I had my eyes on yet another candy that was bad for my health. “Why don’t you eat more healthy candy? Look at all the carbs and sugar in these!”
She wasn’t wrong. I had been consuming a lot of candy on the trip, so it was probably time that I toned it down. “Okay,” I conceded, “let me see what I can find here.”
For the next few minutes, I searched the convenience store for something without so many carbs. Then I saw this on the shelf:
I had remembered having Tic Tacs when I was a kid. It was a mint that you could easily eat the entire box of – who even has the peppermint kind! It’s all about the orange Tic Tac!?When I quickly checked the nutrition facts I thought I had discovered the secret to all my problems. No fat! No carbs! This is the magical candy I would eat for the rest of life and finally be healthy.
I bought them, but on further investigation on the road trip, the girlfriend and I came to a horrifying conclusion: it was all a lie.
Call it good marketing or call it deceitful, but Tic Tacs still have sugar in them (shocker) and they also contain yellow 6, rice starch, carnauba wax. So why was it that the nutrition facts say there is nothing in them when there is clearly some harmful stuff?
Unless you are using Tic Tacs as actual mints, my recommendation to you is to stay away from them! There is much better candy out there, and you aren’t being “healthy” by eating Tic Tacs. You are just being dumb like I was!
Sambit