Four out of five dentists recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.

This line is best understood as a mid-to-late 20th-century advertising formula rather than a literary aphorism. “Four out of five dentists recommend…” became a widely repeated marketing claim in U.S. print, radio, and television ads for sugarless chewing gum, invoking professional authority and pseudo-statistical precision to reassure consumers. The phrasing “for their patients who chew gum” functions as a strategic qualifier: it narrows the recommendation to people already inclined to chew gum, sidestepping the broader question of whether dentists recommend gum-chewing at all. Because the wording circulated across campaigns and brands, it is often treated as anonymous ad copy rather than attributable to a single author.

The quote exemplifies “appeal to authority” rhetoric packaged as quantified consensus. By citing dentists and a neat fraction, it suggests scientific backing while remaining vague about methods, sample size, or what “recommend” entails. The qualifier “patients who chew gum” is crucial: it reframes the choice as not gum versus no gum, but sugarless gum versus sugared gum—an implicit harm-reduction argument. Culturally, the line has become shorthand for how advertising manufactures credibility through expert endorsement and selective statistics, and it is frequently echoed or parodied to critique consumer persuasion and the veneer of objectivity in marketing claims.

1) “Four out of five dentists recommend [brand] sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.”
2) “Nine out of ten dentists recommend…” (a common variant of the same advertising formula)
3) “X out of Y doctors/dentists recommend…” (generalized version used across products)