8 ms·
Tic Tacs claim to have 0 sugar but are almost entirely sugar
- tromp 3y agoCould you sell a bag of sugar, specifying a serving size of 0.49g, as being sugar free?
- ornornor 3y agoI think there are standards around serving sizes, even more so for commodities like that but I don’t know for sure and would be curious to learn more if anyone else feels like chiming in!
- moate 3y agoI mean, they basically are, so yes? I guess there might be some part of the process where you have to explain your serving size and that might be the hard part
- tjr 3y agoDo they really say "sugar free" on the label? I think the claim is that one serving (one tic-tac) has 0g of sugar, which, assuming rounding to the nearest whole number, is probably true. Unfortunately, that might lead someone to say, well, there are 60 tic-tacs in a box, and 60 * 0 is still 0, so I can eat all 60 for 0g of sugar, which of course is not true.
- JohnFen 3y agoAccording to the US FDA's labelling requirements, if something contains less than 0.5g of sugar per serving, it can be labelled "sugar free". https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/guidance-industry-and-fda-dear-manufacturer-letter-regarding-sugar-free-claims https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidan...
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- dwallin 3y agoServing size is an often arbitrary and gameable number. This is a case where the fda need to improve their definitions. Eg. zeroing-out amounts could take serving size into account.
- JohnFen 3y agoYes, the games played with serving sizes can be ridiculous. But, at least in this case, if sugars are present in a food, but at less than half a gram per serving, the label can claim the food to be sugar free, but does still have to contain a disclaimer saying that sugar is present. Welcome to bureaucracy.
- SoftTalker 3y agoBut why? This is like worrying about pennies on a thousand dollar price. A tic-tac is zero sugar in the context of a person's normal daily intake. Except for those who took (and paid attention in) a chemistry class, most people are woefully ignorant of precision and significant figures.
- lm28469 3y agoNot if you have diabetes or if you're into a keto/low carb diet But yes in the context of 70% of people being overweitgh/obese I guess it doesn't matter, the bar is low so we can lower it ever further
- SoftTalker 3y agoNobody is overweight due to eating too many tic-tacs.
- Retric 3y agoEhh, many people are probably eating several boxes a day of tick tacks which are ~100 calories each. I used to pop them like the candy they are, and that adds up fast. So I wouldn’t be surprised if a few thousand people are overweight due to Tick Tacks not actually being 0g of sugar.
- jdpedrie 3y agoNo, they don't. His photo doesn't support his silly claim at all. He highlights that the first ingredient is sugar, and that it says zero grams, but doesn't note the asterisk, which says "less than 0.5g". The tic tacs labeled "sugar free" use artificial sweetener. I don't think any reasonable person would read those three pieces of information and assume that regular tic tacs are sugar free.
- happytoexplain 3y agoA reasonable person would not always notice the triangle and understand what it means, and even then it's obscurantism. Why bother defending what is obviously purposefully misleading? Whether this is enabled by FDA rules doesn't change that.
- verteu 3y agoStill seems like a dark pattern that tic-tacs are manufactured to be 0.49g, just under the 0.5g limit that allows them to round down to zero on the label.
- ghaff 3y ago>The tic tacs labeled "sugar free" use artificial sweetener. I've sort of trained myself to be careful at this point, but this is an annoyance of mine especially with clear sparkling water. I'm fine with and generally like seltzers without sweeteners added. I hate sparkling water with some artificial sweetener and the difference isn't always obvious from the big print on the label.
- castlecrasher2 3y agoI imagine the critique is based on the nutrition label alone; I'm not aware of and cannot find any labeling where the brand suggests the product is "sugar-free" outside the nutrition label. Regardless, it is indeed a deceptive practice that I believe should not be allowed, along with the "sugar-free!" labels when they have maltodextrin or other "basically-sugar" ingredients.
- dwaite 3y agoNo it does not. And they do list the calories to two digits (which are <5g), list sugar as the primary ingredient, and have a footnote saying that the sugar is < 0.5g. The disadvantage of standardized labelling is that there will be edge cases, such as when the serving size is under half a gram. Some other countries standardize on 100g for size, but for tic-tacs that would be more than 3 typical containers worth. Listing all three (portion, container and 100g size) would require a fold-out label to fit, which would negatively impact a product kept in purses and pockets.
- gowld 3y agoThis is an ancient factoid but people love to bring it around again. The problem is that USA doesn't mandate nutrition facts per container, and allows 0.49g "serving sizes". In Tic Tac's defense, the UI design (and adveristing) for the famous "one and a half calorie breath mint" (now 1.9cal) suggests that you should be having only 1 or 2 at a time of these teeny tiny mints. But they know that their customers can't control themselves.
- sdfghswe 3y agoSo are we still calling this website twitter?
- Guvante 3y agoOn the one hand it does have an asterisk and says <0.5g at the end of the label. On the other hand changing the serving size to ~1g would clear this up so there is a lot of rules lawyering going on here. Especially since none of their consumers eats 1 of these things in a serving...
- crazygringo 3y agoThey're breath mints, not candy. Is 1 at a time not enough? Is it 2 or 3?
- usea 3y ago> They're breath mints, not candy. Based on what? I think they're definitely candy.
- crazygringo 3y agoCommon sense? Or if you need proof that it's not just me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic_Tac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic_Tac "Product type: Breath mints" Actual candies tend to be larger, like peppermints, or else you eat a bunch at once, like Nerds. Tic Tacs literally come in a tiny sturdy dispenser box because they're breath mints designed to keep with you for days/weeks. Not a cardboard box to consume in one or two sittings.
- avree 3y ago"Hard mints are hard candies or boiled sweets flavored with mint. Examples of hard mints include starlight mints, also known as pinwheel mints, white, circular, with red or green rays emitting from the middle; candy canes; humbugs; and brand name mints such as Altoids and Ice Breakers."
- Guvante 3y agoIt is 2 or 3 from my experience since the tiny size means they don't have enough of an impact if you have only one. Also they sell non-mint ones... My point is a serving size of 2 would avoid this skullduggery and be representative of how much people eat anyway. Just be honest and say there is 1g of sugar in 1g of tic tacs.
- rcktmrtn 3y agoDefinitely going to reference this fact next time I run into a bug due to an accumulated round off error. I'll wait to get out the pitchfork til they actually say "sugar-free" on the side.
- ggrelet 3y agoTIL the FDA uses metric system.
- Hamuko 3y agoAren't all nutritional labels in the US in metric?
- ornornor 3y agoWait really? You buy quantities in imperial but the nutritional labels are in metric? Good luck with that!
- tedunangst 3y agoWhy would I need to be lucky? When would I care how many ounces of protein are in my sandwich?
- ornornor 3y agoSounds overly complicated? Especially if one unit makes sense to you but the other one doesn’t because you never use it in daily life?
- dmonitor 3y agoserving size is usually in imperial
- kube-system 3y agoAll packaged foods in the US are required by law to be dual labelled in metric and customary units since 1994. The package size, serving size, and nutrition facts are all labelled in metric. It is really a myth to say that the US "doesn't use metric". (and it's also a myth to say that they use imperial units, US customary units diverge in many cases from imperial units) The US widely uses a mix of both customary and metric units.
- toast0 3y ago
- mpitt 3y agoSame idea: 0 calories does not mean 0 calories https://youtu.be/EN6COaYLS_A https://youtu.be/EN6COaYLS_A
- dvh 3y agoWait till you learn about lead free brass
- flangola7 3y agoWhat about it?
- kube-system 3y ago"Lead free" plumbing can and has been permitted to contain lead by regulation. Although the permissible levels are chosen in such a way that it mitigates concerns about it leaching into water systems.
- ornornor 3y agoSame trick used in these 0 calories flavored waters.
- MrStonedOne 3y agorelated fun fact: splenda has more calories than sugar. it can say 0 calories because it has less than 5 per serving (packet)
- acer4666 3y agoWhy do they bother listing amounts, in grams, of the constituents of a 0.49g serving, and round any amount less than 0.5g down to 0? Nothing can be non zero in that case!
- lostlogin 3y agoIsn’t that the entire point? They should apply it to the serving too. For a 0g serving is 0g sugar.
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- thefifthsetpin 3y agoThe federal agencies governing food labeling are very effective. I'm okay with companies employing people to figure out how to live just barely inside the bounds of legal labeling. To me, that's just evidence that the companies couldn't change the regulations through lobbying, couldn't skirt the regulations by bribing inspectors, and couldn't just ignore them and budget for some annual fines.
- nothacking 3y agoThey can round any number under 5 kilocalories to 0, and a gram of sugar has 4 kcal. Same thing with most sweetener packets, which use sugar as a filler or else there would be less then a single grain of powder per pack. Ironically, there is another fairly common filler: erythritol, which has less calories then sugar, and doesn't contribute to blood sugar, but because of how it's produced it can't be labeled natural.
- tromp 3y agoFortunately, here in the Netherlands (and most parts of Europe I suspect), ingredients are specified as amounts per 100g rather than some arbitrary serving size. This makes it very easy to compare products, for instance to see which one has the lowest percentage of sugars. In the US I had a much harder time comparing cereals for sugar content, as every one would have a different serving size.
- sebazzz 3y agoPer 100g or 100ml is mandatory, but it is allowed to show per serving (for instance a hand of M&Ms).
- baal80spam 3y ago> for instance a hand of M&Ms An excellent example of "serving" stupidity. How big a hand? Child's hand? Adult's hand? Bodybuilder's? Woman? Man? Full? Kind of full? I have absolutely no idea what a "serving of cheese" constitutes.
- sebazzz 3y agoTrue, but it is mentioned what a serving is. For instance: "Portion (40g)"
- philsnow 3y agoSure, but the serving size can vary, even between different package sizes of the exact same product, and certainly between different manufacturers. Overall, humans are dumb and can't (or won't) do math in their heads. Consider the stupid thing with the failed 1/3 lb burger positioned in the market against the 1/4 lb burger ( https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fractions/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fr... ). If one product says "5g fat / serving [serving size: 40g]" and another says "4g fat / serving [serving size: 30g]", many many people will think that the second one has lower fat content. If these were normalized to 100g, it would be clear that the first has 5/40*100 = 12.5g of fat whereas the second has 4/30*100 = 13.3g of fat.
- Hamcha 3y agoAlways found the "X per serving" stupid, servings almost never match the actual consumption. Don't know if it's a Europe law or per-state, but in Italy everything has to list nutritional info per 100g(or ml if it's liquid), and tic-tacs correctly show their average of 2 calories per candy[1]. It also is a wakeup call to how heavy snacks are, a can of Pringles is almost 900 calories even though they'd prefer you use their serving size of 30g (about 13 chips) 1. https://images.openfoodfacts.org/images/products/400/840/039/9324/ingredients_en.51.full.jpg https://images.openfoodfacts.org/images/products/400/840/039...
- Izkata 3y ago> servings almost never match the actual consumption My favorite serving size: 1/3 of a muffin.
- manfre 3y ago2/3 of a pickle spear. Any more and it can't round to 0.
- scarby2 3y agoi bought some chips somewhat recently and the serving size was listed as "6 chips".
- MerelyMortal 3y agoI recently ran across some instructions that said to measure 1/3 of an inch... I was beside myself.
- kube-system 3y agoThe US has started implementing an even simpler system. Any foods that are packaged in a way that could plausibly be consumed in a single serving must list the nutrition facts for the whole container. e.g. https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcseriesblog/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2020/01/NutritionLabel-1.jpg https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcseriesblog/wp-content/upl... I think this should be expanded to larger packaging sizes than it currently is. I think that currently only the shorter Pringles cans are affected by this new regulation in the US.
- knome 3y agoIt would be nice if manufacturers always had to provide a "whole package" calorie count on the label.
- kube-system 3y agoThe FDA has started requiring this for some products: > New Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules specify that the label on any food package that contains between two and three servings and that could be eaten in one sitting must provide nutrition information both for a single serving and for eating the entire contents. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/some-food-labels-now-tell-you-the-calories-for-eating-all-the-servings-in-entire-package/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/some-food-labels-now-tell-you-t...
- iknownothow 3y agoI'm a resident of Germany and I visited the US this year. I'm quite conscious of my 5 year old's sugar intake so I almost obsessively look at the labels looking for the percentage of sugar a product contains at grocery stores. Reading the labels in the US was __extremely aggravating__ due to the serving size bullshit and it gave me a headache after calculating the percentage of sugar in the products after like the 10th product. Here in Germany, the label states the number of grams of sugar for every 100 grams of product, so you don't even have to calculate the percentage. Comparing products in the grocery store aisles is really easy in Germany.
- baal80spam 3y ago> the label states the number of grams of sugar for every 100 grams of product Isn't it required in the whole EU?
- defensem3ch 3y agowait until they find out about trans fats!