What are the origins of the breath mint?

Answer 1

I don't know, who does?

Answer 2

History

Over 4,000 years ago, people sucked on whole cloves to cleanse their breath. Clove—rather than mint—is probably the oldest and most common herb used for fresh breath. The Pharisees collected tithes in mint and other sweet-smelling herbs, and the Hebrews and Christians spread it on the floors of synagogues and churches as a symbol of cleanliness and hospitality. In the Middle Ages, anise seed was chewed slowly as a breath freshener (and to cover up odors from liquor consumption). Cardamon seeds are also natural breath sweeteners that have been chewed both in the Orient and in Europe since ancient times. In colonial North America, settlers discovered that small bits of calamus (sweet sedge) root and pieces of dried orris root (the root of the Florentine iris) had similar sweetening effects.

In modern times, breath mints were a logical progression from hard candies and chewing gum—it was gum that really launched breath mints as a separate market segment. Hard candies, made from boiling sugar to a hard rolling boil, have been made over the kitchen fire since ancient times; commercially, hard mints like peppermints and glacier mints (clear candies) were made in Victorian England, on the European continent, and in the United States. But the candy market was as volatile in the 1800s as it is today, and manufacturers have always searched for something new. In 1869, Thomas Adams, an inventor from New York, stumbled on the idea of replacing paraffin wax that was used like chewing gum with chicle, a rubbery fluid produced by some trees. The pelletized chicle was sold in boxes, and new flavors of the chewing gum were introduced over the next 100 years. Many of these flavors had breath-and health-enhancing properties; examples are pepsin (a digestive aid) in Beeman's gum, sassafras and licorice, cloves, Dentyne (the first gum aimed at dental hygiene), Sen-Sen and chlorophyll, cinnamon, and many varieties of mint.

In the 1950s, American Chicle introduced Certs. The need for a mint dedicated to fresh breath had been identified in consumer research. Toothpaste and mouthwash were simply not convenient or portable, and candy mints had no proven association with fresh breath. Certs combined both candy and a breath freshener in a small package. The breath-freshening ingredient was "Retsyn," a mixture of copper gluconate and cottonseed oil that was trademarked by American Chicle. A sugar-free product was introduced in 1982 and reformulated in 1987 with NutraSweet; 1988 retail sales of both the sugar and sugar-free versions of Certs topped $190 million. Also in 1988, the company introduced Sugar Free Certs Mini-Mints, and this began the mini-mint fad that still has a strong grip on the breath-mint market in 2000. Ten years later, in 1998, the breath-freshener market grew by 13% in one year, while all other gum and candy expanded by only 2.3%, according to the National Confectioners Association.

Breath mints have not been without controversy. The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act requires that every food product have a serving size and the equivalent number of calorie stated on the package. Breath mints posed a significant problem for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which took six years to study how to classify serving size and associated calories. Hard candies have a single serving of 0.5oz (15 g), and the FDA initially lumped breath mints in the hard candy category; but 0.5oz (15 g) equals a whole packet of breath mints. The FDA then decided 0.07oz (2 g) (about the same as a single Certs or Breath Saver) would be a suitable single serving. The mini-mint producers objected. Lawyers for Tic Tac claimed that this single serving would be five of their mints. The argument shifted back and forth until the FDA finally ruled that a single serving should equal a single unit—one mint—regardless of size. Effectiveness of breath-freshening was left to be determined by the consumer.

Answer 3

mint has been used for generations in the spice route from Aleppo to India...guindy land...so it is natural that such a nice smelling herb..be used to refresh breath. hope it helps. take a deep breath with fresh mint.

Answer 4

when people die, their breath smells bad. feyth rauda developed the breat mint in 1742 to keep the bad smelling evil spirits from entering the lungs of the mourners at the dead person's funeral

Answer 5

polo / mintos