i would have just worked on something else instead

I think if I were a gum manufacturer, I’d be indignant.

I’ve noticed a push towards “sugar free” gums – advertising extohling the benefits of a sugarless gum solution for your chewing needs. It’s effective, too, as I just picked up a pack of “Orbitz Sugar-Free” from the microkitchens instead of the delicious sounding “Juicy Fruit” – a sugared gum!

I perused the back of the Orbitz package and read: “40% fewer calories, calorie content of this size piece has been reduced from 5 to 3 calories.”

So this whole “sugar free” gum thing saves me all of 2 calories? That’s ridiculous. And imagine the man who had to design this sugar free gum, his time wasted simply because they needed some marketing spin and two less calories.

“You want me to cut the calories in our gum? It’s only 5 calories! What more could you want?” the gum man would say.
With a glint in his eye his manager responds, grinningly, “Crazy idea – let’s knock that down to THREE! That’s 40% less! If one consumes a stick of gum a day, you’ll lose a pound in LESS THAN FIVE YEARS!”
And that engineer does a death march back to his test tubes to figure out how to replace the sugar with phenylalanine and still keep that delicious Orbitz taste.

Actually, I guess it’s Orbit gum? And Orbitz books plane tickets?