Xylitol vs sugar: what you're really chewing

Sugar is fuel for the bacteria that live on your teeth. Chewing a sugared gum after a meal adds more fuel at exactly the moment your teeth are most exposed. The mint flavor makes it feel clean; the label tells the truth.

Sugar free fixes half of it. Most sugar free gum swaps sugar for aspartame or other sweeteners — fine by most standards, but we wanted a sweeter with its own story.

Xylitol is a plant-based sweetener found in fruits and vegetables, commonly extracted from birch or corn. It tastes sweet, contains no added sugar, and contains no aspartame.

It is the sweetener that best fits our rules: ingredients in plain words, and nothing in the formula that works against your teeth.

Xylitol is less aggressively sweet than sugar or aspartame, with a clean finish. Our natural mint is calibrated for a brief, fresh window — not a ten-minute flavor bomb.

If you come from sugared gum, the first piece may taste quieter than you expect. That is what real mint tastes like without the sugar coating.