Ah the mighty Tic Tac, that powerful little breath freshener that Elaine accidentally uses to drive Mr. Peterman so crazy on Seinfeld that she almost loses her job. It’s a mint that’s often been touted as low calorie and sugar free. But in fact, this 1½ Calorie Breath Mint is 100 percent pure sugar.
That’s right, the tic tac is all sugar. But thanks to a government regulation, its small size allows the product to claim that it’s sugar free. How does Tic Tac get away with it? Every Tic Tac weighs just under .5 grams, and each little mint is considered a single serving. The federal regulation states that if an individual serving size has more than .5 grams of sugar, it has to be reported as such, but any less and the serving is “technically” sugar free because the manufacturer is allowed to report the sugar content as zero. Tic Tac is able to make the claim that its pure sugar breath mint is sugar free simply because the mint weighs less than the amount needed to report the sugar content in the first place.
Now that’s what we call a loophole.
