HallPass Candy Has 1 Gram of Sugar. Here Is Where the Other 20 Grams of Carbs Went
The 70-calorie peanut cups and candy pieces from David Protein’s parent company hit Walmart nationwide on August 30. The sugar line says 1 gram. The carbohydrate line says up to 29. The gap is two rare sugars, tagatose and allulose, which the label is allowed to leave off. What the tolerance studies say about one pack, and about a Halloween bowl.
HallPass, from Medici Brands (parent of David Protein), launched nationwide at Walmart on August 30, 2026 with Peanut Cups, Peanut Creme Crispy Wafers and Chocolatey Candy Pieces, each 70 calories and 1 g sugar per 42 to 43 g pack (about $1.82 a pack at launch per trade reports). Per pack, the brand panels list total carbohydrate of 21 g (Cups), 23 g (Wafers) and 29 g (Pieces); dietary fiber, mostly soluble corn fiber, of 11, 10 and 7 g; 1 g total sugars; and less than 1 to 1 g sugar alcohol (erythritol or isomalt). Subtracting leaves about 8 to 9 g, 11 g (including wheat starch) and 20 to 21 g of carbohydrate on no sub-line: that is the rare sugars tagatose and allulose, which FDA allows brands to exclude from Total and Added Sugars (allulose guidance 2020; tagatose letter November 2025) but which must count in total carbohydrate. Tagatose is the first ingredient in the Candy Pieces. In tolerance studies, 20 g of tagatose in chocolate caused mostly mild extra gas, rumbling and bloating without more diarrhea, while about 30 g at once caused diarrhea in 31.5% of young men in one screening study; an allulose study suggested a maximum single dose of about 0.4 g per kg of body weight. The fat system includes EPG, a modified fat designed to pass through undigested, but a pack has only 3.5 to 5 g of total fat versus the 25 to 40 g a day at which EPG trial effects appeared. One pack sits within studied doses; several packs at once exceed them, with gas, bloating and looser stools the expected effects. Educational, not medical advice.
One of the newest candies at Walmart this Halloween season comes from the people who made the protein bar with the fat designed not to digest. HallPass launched nationwide at Walmart on August 30: peanut butter cups, peanut-creme crispy wafers and a candy-coated chocolate piece, each 70 calories and 1 gram of sugar a pack, from Medici Brands, the parent company of David Protein. Its co-founders are Peter Rahal, who founded RXBAR and David, and Michael Tierney, the brand’s president and the founder of Stuffed Puffs. “Our ambition is to make HallPass the Coke Zero of candy,” Tierney said in the launch release, and he means the price too: the release promises it without “asking consumers to pay a premium,” and trade reports put a pack at about $1.82 at launch.
Getting a peanut butter cup down to 70 calories and 1 gram of sugar takes a stack of substitutions, and every one of them is on the label. Most of them also end up in your large intestine. Here is the read, product by product, with the arithmetic the front of the pack leaves out.
The labelThree candies, one missing number
Each HallPass ingredient list is sorted into “systems,” the same format David uses. The Peanut Cups open with a sweetener system of soluble corn fiber, tagatose, allulose, nonfat dry milk, erythritol, whey, sucralose and acesulfame potassium, then a fat system led by “modified plant fat (EPG)” with peanut butter and palm kernel oil. The Crispy Wafers add a wafer made of wheat flour. The Chocolatey Candy Pieces are the outlier: tagatose is the very first ingredient, ahead of the corn fiber, and the polyol is isomalt rather than erythritol.
| Per pack | Peanut Cups | Crispy Wafers | Candy Pieces |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calories | 70 | 70 | 70 |
| Total carbohydrate | 21 g | 23 g | 29 g |
| Dietary fiber (mostly soluble corn fiber) | 11 g | 10 g | 7 g |
| Total sugars | 1 g | 1 g | 1 g |
| Sugar alcohol | <1 g (erythritol) | 1 g (erythritol) | <1 g (isomalt) |
| Carbohydrate on no sub-line | ~8–9 g | ~11 g (includes wheat-flour starch) | ~20–21 g |
That bottom row is the point. The panels count fiber, sugar and sugar alcohol, and those three lines leave between 8 and 21 grams of carbohydrate per pack unaccounted for. It is not a mistake. Tagatose and allulose are “rare sugars”: they taste like sugar but are only partly absorbed, and FDA lets brands keep them out of the sugar lines. For allulose, that has been formal guidance since 2020; for tagatose, a November 2025 FDA letter said the agency would not object to leaving it out of both Total and Added Sugars. Both still have to be counted in total carbohydrate, which is why the arithmetic works. So “1g sugar” is accurate on its own terms, and the Candy Pieces still contain up to about 20 grams of tagatose and allulose combined. (Note that the brand’s FAQ, answering what sweetens HallPass, names only soluble corn fiber, sucralose and acesulfame potassium; the ingredient list is the complete source.)
Everything a label can leave off the sugar line still has to be in the carbohydrate line. Subtract, and the candy tells you what it is made of.
The scienceWhat the trials say about those doses
Tagatose is the ingredient with the most specific human data, and most of it comes from a set of 1999 studies. In a screening study of 73 young men given about 30 grams at once, 31.5% reported diarrhea and 15.1% nausea, and flatulence “did not decline” over 15 days of daily use; the authors wrote that 30 grams at one time “may be above the dose which should be recommended for ordinary use.” A crossover trial of 29 grams at breakfast found more rumbling, distention, nausea and flatulence than the same amount of table sugar, while the sugar was “otherwise well tolerated in most of the subjects.” The study closest to a candy aisle is Lee and Storey: 50 students ate 40 grams of chocolate made with 20 grams of tagatose. Stool frequency and watery stools did not rise; colic, flatulence, rumbling and bloating did, mostly to “slightly more than usual,” and the authors called 20 grams “tolerated well.” No study we could find sets a lower threshold, so we will not print one.
For allulose, the most-cited tolerance study, Han and colleagues in 2018, stepped young adults up in dose and saw severe diarrhea appear at 0.5 grams per kilogram of body weight. It suggested a maximum of 0.4 g/kg in one sitting (about 24 grams for someone who weighs 60 kg) and 0.9 g/kg across a day. Two of its authors work for CJ CheilJedang, a major allulose producer. The polyols barely register here: at under a gram per pack, the erythritol and isomalt are far below the 20 to 35 grams of erythritol that one trial found produced no symptoms, and the 30 to 40 grams of isomalt in chocolate at which another began to see them.
Then there is the fiber. The Peanut Cups carry 11 grams of it, mostly soluble corn fiber (“We use soluble corn fiber to replace the solids and bulking that sucrose traditionally provides,” Tierney told Food Business News). It is one of the gentler fermentable fibers, as we covered in a protein shake that uses 8 grams of it, but it is still food for gut bacteria, and 11 grams is about two-thirds of the 16.6 grams the average American adult eats in a whole day. The EPG fat, the ingredient most people search for, is the least of it: a pack’s total fat is 3.5 to 5 grams, shared with peanut butter and palm kernel oil, while the published EPG trial saw its oily-stool effects at 25 to 40 grams a day. Our EPG explainer has the full dose table.
The Halloween mathOne pack versus a bowl
Put it together and one pack is comfortably inside what the studies tolerated. The Candy Pieces, the heaviest, deliver up to about 20 grams of tagatose and allulose plus 7 grams of fiber: close to the 20-gram tagatose-in-chocolate dose that produced mostly mild rumbling, below the 29 to 30 grams that produced more. The Peanut Cups deliver less rare sugar and more fiber. What the studies do not describe is Halloween. Three packs of Candy Pieces is roughly 60 grams of rare sugars and 21 grams of corn fiber in an evening, which is well past every single dose above. The effects that follow are the ones the trials list: gas, bloating, rumbling and, at the high end, looser stools. They are predictable and usually short-lived. That is the same pattern behind every sugar-free candy bowl, just with different ingredients doing the work.
Two more notes for anyone reading labels closely. In July, a federal appeals court revived a class action over a “zero sugar” yogurt sweetened with allulose, so how rare sugars are labelled is being argued in court. HallPass says “1g sugar” rather than “zero sugar,” and we found no suit naming it. And the brand has a sense of humour about attention: its first product images carried AI-garbled text, which Tierney told Business Insider was left in on purpose, as “a little bit of internet rage bait.” The finished packs, BI reported, are typo-free.
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The short version: HallPass is a well-built 70-calorie candy whose sweetness comes mostly from two rare sugars your small intestine only partly absorbs, bulked out with a fermentable corn fiber. One pack sits inside the doses studied. A handful of packs in one sitting is the scenario the studies suggest your gut will notice. The ingredient most people worry about, the EPG fat, is the one present in the smallest amount. HallPass and Medici Brands had no involvement in this article. It is educational, describes what the cited labels, letters and studies say, and is not medical advice.