MediCBD CBD Chewing Gum 17mg, Strawberry

One piece is about 1.41mg, not 17mg

The manufacturer puts twelve pieces in a blister and seventeen milligrams of CBD across them. Several sellers publish the resulting figure directly: about one and four tenths of a milligram in each piece.

That is a long way from anything else we sell. The Hempthy tablets carry fifty milligrams in one unit. The cola bottles and the strongest fizzy bears carry thirty. The entry tier of most of our sweets is ten. One piece of this gum is around one and a half.

Put another way, you would chew about seven pieces to reach ten milligrams, which is the figure the Food Standards Agency gives as a daily maximum for healthy adults, and about twelve to get through the seventeen the pack is named after.

We are not saying that to run the product down, and it is worth being clear about that. A low amount in each piece is arguably the whole point of chewing gum. It is the mildest format on our shelves, it is easy to have one without thinking much about it, and if a thirty milligram sweet has ever felt like more than you wanted, this is the opposite end of the same shelf. Plenty of people will want exactly this.

The only thing wrong here is the labelling convention. A number on the front of a pack, with no per-piece figure next to it, will be read as a strength by most people most of the time. Ours is the only page we can find that puts the two numbers side by side.

A colour additive the EU removed and Great Britain kept

The ingredient declaration our own distributor publishes for this gum lists its colours as E171 and E141ii.

E171 is titanium dioxide, and its regulatory position is genuinely split. The European Union removed it from its list of permitted food additives with effect from 7 August 2022, after the European Food Safety Authority concluded it could no longer be considered safe as a food additive. Great Britain went the other way: the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland reviewed the same evidence and, in March 2022, kept it authorised. So it is lawful in food sold in England, Scotland and Wales, and it is not permitted in food in the EU.

The curiosity is that this gum is made in the EU. Blazed names the manufacturer as Multitrance Original Amsterdam. An EU-produced food carrying an additive the EU delisted is an odd combination, and it is the sort of thing worth telling you about rather than skating past.

Northern Ireland is where it stops being a curiosity. Northern Ireland continues to follow EU food additive rules, which means E171 is not permitted in food there. We have put that question to our supplier and we will not ship this line to a Northern Ireland address until we have a clear answer.

What we are not going to do is tell you the product is unsafe or that you should avoid it. Two competent regulators looked at the same evidence and reached different conclusions, which happens, and neither of them asked us to editorialise. We are telling you it is there, what the position is on each side of the Irish Sea, and leaving the decision with you.

One caveat on the declaration itself. Sellers do not agree about the colours in this gum. Our distributor gives E171 and E141ii. Two European sellers list E133 instead. It is most likely different flavours' lists being mixed up, which is something we have now run into four times across this catalogue. We publish our distributor's version because that is the stock we would actually be shipping.

The rest of the label

The gum base contains soy lecithin, so this product contains soya. That is a declarable allergen and not one page ranking for this gum mentions it, which is the same gap we have found on sulphites right across this catalogue.

It is sugar free, and it gets there with four polyols and two sweeteners: sorbitol, isomalt and maltitol syrup, plus acesulfame K and sucralose. Four sugar alcohols in one product is a lot, and there is a labelling rule about foods with more than ten per cent added polyols that we have set out in full on the Hempthy sugar free gummies listing. It is worth reading if you have ever reacted to a sugar-free sweet.

E321 is butylated hydroxytoluene, a synthetic antioxidant. It is in there to stop the fats in the gum base going rancid, it is permitted, and some people prefer to avoid it. That is the whole of what we can usefully say about it.

There is hemp essential oil at three tenths of one per cent alongside the CBD, which is a flavour and aroma ingredient rather than a source of cannabinoids.

Worth one line on who makes this. Our distributor names Multitrance Original Amsterdam. That is the same manufacturer behind several products in this catalogue that carry different names on the front, which we have written about elsewhere. Astra Hemp's chewing gum sits at the same seventeen and thirty six milligram tiers with the same mango flavour, which is a strong hint about where that comes from too.

What it is like, and what gum is actually for

Strawberry, sweet, and recognisably a European chewing gum rather than a British one. The flavour is bright at the start and fades faster than a sugared gum would, which is normal for a polyol-sweetened base.

The CBD contributes nothing to the taste at this quantity, and would not at any quantity here, since it arrives as an oil in a gum base rather than as anything you would notice.

The genuine argument for gum as a format is not strength, it is discretion and pace. Nobody looks twice at someone chewing gum. It needs no water, no measuring and no privacy, and it takes several minutes rather than several seconds, which is the same point we made about mint imperials from a different direction.

The genuine argument against it is that a gum is the least precise way to take anything. How long you chew is not a measurement, and the manufacturer publishes no guidance on how long a piece should be chewed for. So if a known amount matters to you, this is the wrong end of the shelf and a tablet or an oil is the right one.

Who should skip this gum

Anyone with a soya allergy. The gum base contains soy lecithin, and that alone settles it.

Anyone in Northern Ireland, for now. Until our supplier confirms the position on E171 we are not shipping this line there, and we would rather say that plainly than take the order.

Anyone who has had trouble with sugar-free sweets before. Three polyols in one product is a lot, and the sugar free gummies listing explains why that matters more than the phrase sugar free suggests.

Anyone who wants a meaningful amount of CBD in a single item. One piece is roughly a seventh of the FSA's whole-day figure, and chewing your way to a larger number is a slow and imprecise business.

And anyone who assumed the seventeen on the front described a piece. It does not, we would rather you knew that here than found out later, and if that changes your mind then the page has done its job.