Man Gains 40 Lbs in a Year Despite No Change in His Eating Habits. Then Doctor Finds Him Fiddling With Tic-Tac
It is easy to keep a check on calorie intake with a simple glance at the food item’s packaging. But can the charts be really trusted? A Reddit user (u/DumpsterPuff) narrated his dilemma with a Tic-Tacs as he gained around 40 lbs within a year, in a viral post earlier this year. He addressed how the details meant to inform people about the ingredients they are consuming can oftentimes mislead them into an unhealthy diet.
The Reddit user recalled being “obsessed” with Tic-Tacs and could not get his hands off the Fruit Adventure flavor. “The flavor combined with the soft smush they make between your teeth when you chew them makes my brain very happy,” he wrote. His addiction to the little white candies urged him to buy them in bulk amounts of 12 containers with each container having 200 candies each. Unaware of the calories, the user happened to devour them “by the handful” while working or gaming, emptying one to two containers in a jiffy.
“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!” the viral Reddit post added. What followed became a cause of concern for him. He gained nearly 40 lbs within a year without any drastic changes to his eating habits while his Tic-Tac obsession did not even cross his mind. He saw a doctor who failed to discover any abnormalities in his health report, further suggesting some blood tests to be done.
The normal results prompted his doctor to refer him to a weight-loss expert and a dietician. After a round of doctor appointments and months of working with a dietician, the latter finally caught the red-handed while he was fiddling with an empty Tic-Tac container during a virtual meeting. He was asked to maintain a food log to keep his diet in check but the Reddit user did not mention his Tic-Tacs, thinking they bore no calories. He admitted his ill habit to the dietician after she was curious about the large Tic-Tac container in his hand. “So, I told her about it and how I eat 1-2 of those per day,” he stated.
The Reddit user was shocked to find out that the labels were not all that accurate. He explained, “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 fewer calories.” The post highlighted that every Tic-Tac candy contained 2 calories. This meant the Reddit user was consuming about 400-800 calories every day since he claimed to empty one to two Tic-Tac boxes. “In addition to all the other food I've been eating - which is very likely why I've gained so much weight,” he concluded.
Meanwhile, people in the comments were baffled by the Reddit user’s Tic-Tac debacle and expressed concerns about his sugar intake and teeth health. To this, the user replied in his post that his teeth were fine and that despite his love for candies, he didn't suffer any cavities or decay. Some other users were enlightened by the zero-calorie fact about food packaging, and the man was glad he could share the knowledge with them. “Personally I wish we could have the model they do in other countries where they list calories per X amount of grams,” he wrote skeptical of the "0 calorie" rule in the U.S.