In 1997, the FDA Set Out to Regulate Tic Tacs. They’re Still at It.

Apparently, some people eat more than one breath
mint at a time. 

This earth-shattering insight has slowed the Food and Drug
Administration’s rulemaking process to…what’s slower than a
crawl? a slither? a shimmy? a blorp?

Begun in 1997, the push to regulate the labels on Tic Tacs,
Certs, and other breath fresheners has recently been restarted with
a new 145-page document after the first one was withdrawn for being
outdated. But that first document spawned a host of other documents
from a rogues gallery of agencies about the all-important question
of portion size. 

The Washington Times reports: 

The FDA figured out that different breath mints have different
RACC’s, making it tricky to standardize labels in the way
originally intended by the bureaucrats. RACC is “reference amount
customarily consumed,” or what consumers sometimes call a “serving
size.”

But breath mints are not of uniform size. So rather than
requiring labels to list calories, sugar content, etc., on a basis
such as “per gram,” the FDA is finally settling on having it listed
“per unit,” meaning “one mint.” This makes sense because a Tic Tac
is tinier than a Certs or BreathSaver. The FDA now agrees, noting
that a 0.4-gram breath mint may have “the same breath-freshening
capacity as larger mints” that are 2.0-grams.

But the FDA went far deeper, exploring the public health issues
of breath mints.

Here come the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the
Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Agriculture, and many
more with their thoughts about America’s oversized behinds and
whether or not breath mints are part of the problem.

And of course, there’s this:

Perhaps most importantly, the FDA proposes “to redesignate §
101.9(b)(2)(i)(F) as § 101.9(b)(2)(i)(E), redesignate
§101.9(b)(2)(i)(G) as § 101.9(b)(2)(i)(F), redesignate §
101.9(b)(2)(i)(H) as § 101.9(b)(2)(i)(G), and redesignate §
101.9(b)(2)(i)(I) as § 101.9(b)(2)(i)(H), because the proposed rule
would remove current § 101.9(b)(2)(i)(E).”

Read the
whole depressing thing.