MediCBD CBD Chewing Gum 36mg, Mango

We may be selling you this gum twice

Multitrance is a manufacturer in Amsterdam. Our distributor names it as the maker of this MediCBD gum, and Multitrance's own website lists a thirty six milligram mango chewing gum under three separate brand names: MediCBD, Astra Hemp, and its own Multitrance label.

We stock two of those three. This page is the MediCBD one. Elsewhere in this catalogue there is an Astra Hemp chewing gum at the same thirty six milligrams, in the same mango, in the same box format, with the same published ingredient declaration.

Our own working rule is that a product gets listed once. It was written for the case where two distributors carry the same item and we might accidentally show it twice. This is the same mistake arriving from a different direction: one manufacturer, two of its own labels, imported as two products.

Here is exactly how strong the evidence is, because that matters. We can see three product pages on the manufacturer's website under three brand names, all at thirty six milligrams and all mango. We can see that our distributor attributes the MediCBD gum to that manufacturer. We can see that both products in our catalogue share a strength tier, a flavour, a box format and an identical declaration down to the additive numbers. What we could not do is open all three manufacturer pages, because they returned errors when we tried, so we have not compared three labels side by side.

That was a strong inference rather than a proven fact when we first wrote it, and we have asked the manufacturer to confirm. We have since sourced the Astra Hemp declaration independently and it matches this one character for character, down to the additive numbers, with the same piece count, the same net weight and the same box format. The Astra Hemp listing sets out that comparison in full. On the evidence, if you are choosing between our MediCBD mango gum and our Astra Hemp mango gum, you are choosing between two names for one product, and this is the listing we intend to keep.

There is a wider point worth making, since this catalogue keeps running into it. Quite a lot of the CBD market is one factory's product wearing different labels. We have found the same gummy bear under three brand names elsewhere in this shop. It is not a scandal and nobody is being deceived about what is in the packet, but it does mean that a shelf full of brands can be a much smaller number of actual products, and a shop that never mentions that is not being straight with you.

Three milligrams a piece, and whether the stronger tier is the one to get

Our distributor states it plainly for this product: thirty six milligrams in a blister of twelve pieces, three milligrams in each piece.

The other tier, the strawberry and mint gums at seventeen milligrams, works out at about one and four tenths of a milligram a piece. So the stronger gum is roughly double, and that is genuinely the whole difference between them.

What that means practically is easier to see in pieces than in milligrams. The Food Standards Agency advises healthy adults on a maximum of ten milligrams of CBD a day. On the seventeen milligram gum that is around seven pieces. On this one it is between three and four.

Whether that is worth choosing over the milder tier depends entirely on why you are buying gum. If the appeal is having something you can chew without thinking about it, the milder one gives you more room to do that. If you find yourself working through half a blister to feel you have had anything, this tier is the sensible answer to that.

Either way, keep the scale in mind. Three milligrams a piece is still the second-lowest figure of anything in this shop. Doubling a small number gives you a slightly less small number, and gum is the mild end of this catalogue by design rather than by accident.

The label, which is identical to the milder gum

Word for word, the declaration on this product is the same as the seventeen milligram version apart from the flavouring. That tells you the two tiers are one recipe with more or less CBD oil in it.

It contains soya, in the gum base, which is a declarable allergen and is not mentioned on any page currently ranking for this gum.

It is sugar free by way of three sugar alcohols, sorbitol, isomalt and maltitol syrup, with acesulfame K and sucralose on top. Three polyols in one product is worth understanding before you get through a lot of it, and we have set out the labelling rule that applies to foods high in polyols on the Hempthy sugar free gummies listing.

The colours declared by our distributor are E171 and E141ii. There is a problem with that which only becomes visible once you have read all three MediCBD gums: E141ii is a green colourant, the same list is published for the mint gum as well, and green is what belongs in a mint gum rather than a mango one. We have set that out on the mint listing and have asked for the per-flavour declarations.

E171 is titanium dioxide, which Great Britain kept as a permitted food additive when the European Union removed it, and which Northern Ireland therefore does not permit in food. We have set out that split in full on the seventeen milligram listing, and the same position applies here: we are not shipping this line to a Northern Ireland address until our supplier confirms where it stands.

E321 is butylated hydroxytoluene, a synthetic antioxidant that keeps the gum base from going rancid. Hemp essential oil appears at three tenths of one per cent as a flavour ingredient rather than as a source of cannabinoids.

Mango, and a word about what a brand name is

Mango in a chewing gum is a confectionery mango rather than a fruit one: sweet, slightly floral, more sherbet than stone fruit. It is bright at the start and fades quicker than a sugared gum would, which is what a polyol-sweetened base does.

The CBD contributes nothing to the taste at three milligrams, and would not at rather more than that either, arriving as it does as an oil worked into a gum base.

One thing that is hard to unsee once you have noticed it. The manufacturer's own-label version of this gum is called Cannabis Chewing Gum, Mango Kush. The MediCBD one is called Mango. As far as we can tell it is the same gum, with the same declaration, containing the same CBD isolate and no more of anything else.

Mango Kush is the name of a cannabis strain. Attaching it to a product whose cannabinoid content is three milligrams of CBD a piece is a marketing decision rather than a description of the contents, and it is worth knowing that a name on the front of a CBD product carries no obligation to describe what is inside it. The ingredient declaration does. The name does not.

Who should skip this gum

Anyone with a soya allergy, because of the lecithin in the gum base.

Anyone in Northern Ireland, until our supplier answers the question about E171. We would rather turn the order away than take it and hope.

Anyone who already has our Astra Hemp mango gum in their basket. On the evidence above, you are quite likely buying the same thing twice, and we will update this page the moment the manufacturer tells us either way.

Anyone who has reacted to sugar-free sweets before. Three sugar alcohols in one product is a lot, whatever the CBD in it is doing.

And anyone who wants a meaningful amount of CBD from a single item. Three milligrams a piece is double the milder gum and still small against everything else on these shelves. If the number matters more than the format, a tablet or a measured oil is the honest recommendation.