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How Bad Breath Became Its Own Industry
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Jun 23, 2025
Today on Weird History Food we are examining how one of the world's BEST breath Fresheners got it start. Bad Breath has plagued everyone since the dawn of time, and various cultures had their own ways of dealing with it.... Until one day, and Italian company created the small powerhouse breath freshener we all know today!
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Today, we're answering the question, what exactly is a Tic Tac
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It wasn't until the late 19th century that some of the biggest advancements in fresh breath came
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into being. Altoids first entered the market in 1870 and between the 1930s, 40s and 50s
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the demand for breath freshening products exploded across America. Meanwhile, over in Italy, confectioner Pietro Ferrero invented a hazel-based
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chocolate substitute to deal with the chocolate shortages created by world war ii he called this
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new food product pasta jandulia pietro and his wife pierre salario founded an all-new company
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to meet the public's growing demand for it in 1951 this new management team introduced a creamy
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version of pasta jandulia which they called super crema jandulia the product was renamed and
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rebranded and nutella was introduced to the world by the end of the 60s the family-owned company was
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ready to start investing in itself and to branch out and experiment with all new products
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At first, this meant the 1968 creation of Kinder Chocolates. Just one year later
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this branching out would also bring about what Michel Ferreiro initially dubbed Refreshing Mints
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And they originally came in just two flavors, Fresh Mint and Orange. Just one year after
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Refreshing Mints launched, however, Ferreiro decided to do away with this generic-sounding
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name and to give their product that extra something special Thus in 1970 the Refreshing Mint became known as the Tic Tac allegedly named after the clicking noise made by their small plastic containers Tic Tacs were a runaway success Regardless their growing flavor lineup had its first setback
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in 1976, when their newly introduced grape flavor was found to contain the red dye Amaranth
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which was believed to be a carcinogenic and was likewise banned within the United States
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that very same year. Despite grapes failing, by 1980, the sale of Tic Tacs had expanded to over
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five different continents. Still, to the health-conscious consumer, the Tic Tac packaging
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can be deceiving. Tic Tac's nutritional facts claim that the serving size, which is one mint
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has both zero calories and zero grams of sugar. However, sugar is also listed as the product's
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number one ingredient. According to FDA regulations, a product only has to list that it contains sugar
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if it's made with more than half a gram of sugar, and it only has to list calories if it has more than five
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By listing a serving size as a single mint, which are seemingly deliberately made with only 0.49 grams of sugar
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Tic Tac packaging is able to claim that each Tic Tac has neither sugar nor calories
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If you were to eat the contents of a whole 60 Tic Tac box, you would actually be consuming nearly 30 grams of sugar and nearly 100 calories
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making a single package of Tic Tacs comparable to a can of soda. Tic Tac was able to work its way to the number one breath mint spot by 2021
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Despite this exponential growth, Ferrero still remains a private, family-run company