2. Breath Freshener
Unsurprisingly, peppermint oil is also a key ingredient in many breath freshening products. Many commercially available chewing gums, tubes of toothpaste, and mouthwashes use peppermint as the main ingredient. It is even the branded flavor that a lot of these products use. In the chewing gum aisle, you’re just as likely to see a pack labeled with the word ‘peppermint’ as you are with the word ‘strawberry’.
Where this flavor is applied naturally, the breath-freshening qualities are enhanced all the more. What is quite funny about peppermint in chewing gum, is that it has almost taken on a life of its own, as a flavor label rather than as an ingredient. People even subconsciously choose to chew peppermint for its flavor and breath freshening properties, without actually referring to it explicitly.
You’re just as likely to ask someone to pick you up a packet of the ‘green gum’ as you are to ask them to pick you up a packet of peppermint gum. It just so happens that these are the same product, but such is our familiarity with the breath freshening capability of peppermint, that it hardly seems to matter.