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Misguided guy claims to have eaten 400 Tic-Tacs a day and gained 40 lbs: '[I] didn't realize that Tic-Tacs weren't actually 0 calories'

There's something to be learned here about not taking things at face value and using a little common sense to draw a more logical conclusion. Often in life, things are simplified for us in order to cater to the lowest common denominator and, in the process, obfuscate the actual point of the information that was supposed to be communicated in the first place.

An extreme example of this is our entire understanding of chemistry; we're taught from our days in middle school chem class—clear through an undergraduate bachelor's in chemistry—that reactions and the quanta of energy exchange happen in a definable "Lego building brick" sort of way, only for the curtain to be pulled back at the last possible moment when your lecturer tells you in the final course of the degree that everything you've learned is actually an oversimplification and not really how things work at all… Cue existential crisis.

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Posted by Brad Dickson
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  • Yeah, this happens all the time and in more ways than we probably realize. And I'm not saying this in a “Wake up, Sheeple, you're being lied to,” kind of way; I more just mean that if something is too good to be true, it probably is. 

    Nutritional information on the back of food packaging is one of them. Unsurprisingly, there are certain strict rules around what you have to put on your packaging. But as long as you follow those rules, it doesn't really matter what you put on there. You could say you bend the truth a little bit to make your product seem more appealing. This is why things like spray butter have “0 calories per spray,”  but that's because what they define as a “spray” doesn't meet the minimum requirement for needing to list the calories on the package. But if you just pause for just a moment and reason this through and look past the number on the package, common sense prevails. It's butter, dude… Pure fat, probably with salt added; there's no way you can just get away with heaping massive amounts of it on your food, and your body is going to just go, “JK, it doesn't count, dude, because there's a 0 on the packaging." As commenters in this thread have also pointed out, you're never going to have a good time if you consume 400 of something daily. 

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  • 1
    "I've been eating 400-800+ calories per day of Tic-Tacs"
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
  • 2
    TIFU by not telling my doctor how many Tic-Tacs I eat per day M So I'm absolutely obsessed with the Fruit Adventure flavor of Tic-Tacs. The flavor combined with the soft smush they make between your teeth when you chew them makes my brain very happy. I've been buying them in bulk, where each container has 200 candies each, and they come in bulk packs of 12 containers. I tend to eat them by the handful while I'm working or gaming, so in a day I can easily slam through 1-2 containers.
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
  • 3
    Now keep in mind that on the nutrition label, it says the serving size is 1 candy, and is listed as having 0 calories, which I thought was awesome because I could have as many as I want! Over the past year, I found that I gained about 40lbs, and nothing about my eating habits had changed as far as I was aware. I told my doctor about it and she was a bit worried, so she had me do a bunch of bloodwork to see if there was a reason why I gained so much weight in a short period of time. Everything ca
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
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  • 4
    I had been working with the dietician for a few months now, and we have me keep a food log. I had a virtual visit with her today and during it, I was fiddling around with an empty container to keep my hands busy. She saw it and asked where I got such a large container from, so I told her about it and how I eat 1-2 of those per day. She asked why those weren't on my food. tracker and I said it was because they're 0 calories so they wouldn't count.
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
  • 5
    Apparently I was very, very wrong about this. She explained to me that food companies can label something as being "0 calories" if the food's serving size contains 5 or less calories. In reality, each individual Tic-Tac actully has about 2 calories. So essentially, since each container has 200 pieces and I typically have 1-2 of those, I've been eating 400-800+ calories per day of Tic-Tacs, in addition to all the other food I've been eating - which is very likely why I've gained so much weight.
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
  • 6
    TL;DR: Didn't realize that tic-tacs weren't actually 0 calories and gained a ton of weight because I eat so many a day. Edit: Just wanted to clarify that I'm aware that sugar will in fact make you gain weight (I'm not that stupid), but I never actually read the product ingredients. I assumed they must have been made with something like Xylitol or some other artificial sweetener to make them "0 calories" so it never crossed my mind to check!
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
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  • 7
    Edit 2: Dang y'all are brutal Imao. But at least some good came out of it since apparently, like me, a lot of people didn't realize about the "less than 5 calories per serving" rule can legally be classified as 0 in the US. Personally I wish we could have the model they do in other countries where they list calories per X amount of grams.
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
  • 8
    YourDadsUsername 18 hr. ago • Tic Tacs are small enough to legally be labeled sugar free even though they're almost pure sugar.
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
  • 9
    kafelta 10 hr. ago • Bro ate 40lbs of tictacs
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
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  • 10
    Otherwise-Chain 16 hr. ago In Europe, you gotta have calories per 100g of product as well - really helps to avoid these kinds of situations. Glad you finally figured it out OP
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
  • 11
    davidfeuer 15 hr. ago That's a way better way to label, but it makes it harder for disingenuous companies to pull one over on people, so it won't happen in the US.
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
  • 12
    bubblesculptor · 17 hr. ago Once you really start looking at nutritional labels you see that many of them are very deceptive. Very tiny servings, rounding-down measurements, loopholes in interpretation, etc. Essentially they can completely lie while technically telling the truth.
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
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  • 13
    AngstyToddler 14 hr. ago edited 13 hr. ago Reminds me of when I went to a friend's house and watched him take the pump off a bottle of spray butter and just dump it into the mashed potatoes. I asked him why he didn't just use butter or margarine and he said it was because the spray butter was zero calories. I had to explain the whole concept of "per spray" and did the math to show it had almost the exact same calories as margarine. His wife had gained about 30 lbs since they'd married the year b
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
  • 14
    ETA: Remembered another one. He was buying low calorie bread, but never compared the calories to regular bread. Just assumed it was much, much less. Instead of serving her 2 slices of regular bread each morning (190 calories) he was serving her 4 slices of lower calorie bread (240 calories slathered with "zero - calorie" butter spray, of course).
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
  • 15
    Not3kidsinasuit 12 hr. ago I just finished a diploma in a medical field, we were warned about people like you OP. I wish I was joking.
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
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  • 16
    • LeaningBack 16 hr. ago Nutrition Facts servings 60, Serv. size 1 mint (0.5g), Amount per serving: Calories 0. Total Fat 0g (0% DV), Sodium 0mg (0% DV), Total Carb. Og (0% V), Protein 0g. %DV = % Daily Value INGREDIENT: SUGAR, ALTODEXTRIN, TARTARIC ACID, GUM ARABIC, RICE STARCH, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, MAGNESIUM STEARATE, MALIC ACID, CITRIC ACID, DRIED PASSIONFRUIT, DRIED GREEN APPLE CARNAUBA WAX, ASCORBIC ACID, YELLOW 6, YELLOW 5, RED 40, BLUE 1. ADDS A TRIVIAL AMOUNT OF CALORIES, TOTA
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
  • 17
    • DoomyHowlinkun 11 hr. ago Honestly, it's all critical thinking. Idc what the someone eats, if you are slamming 200-400 of literally J anything and feel a significant change in your health, then first thing you should question is that thing you are overconsuming. First rule of eating, eat anything in moderation. Too much of anything is bad for you.
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
  • 18
    Behappyalright - 17 hr. ago This could only work if they were sugar free??? Ok but if they were, you would be having a lot of diarrhea potentially.... Depending on the sweetener.
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
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  • 19
    Jacareadam 14 hr. ago. People really do be living out there without any common sense, huh
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
  • 20
    • Scared_Calligrapher5 15 hr. ago The sentence involving "I had been eating 400-800 calories of tik taks a day" Makes me chuckle lol hope you're doin better thou
    Via u/DumpsterPuff
  • 21
    DoubleResponsible276 17 hr. ago Just because one of the few things I remember from a diet and nutrition course I took, I did some math. 3000 excess/deficit = 1lb gained/lost So from high to low calorie intake, one could replicate this in between 150 - 300 days. Crazy how tictacs could really change someone's body in less than a year. 460 Reply Share tekanet 13 hr. ago The crazy part for me is that someone guzzling hundreds of candies can remotely think that this has no impact on their health and
    Via u/DumpsterPuff

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