THE GUM WORLD - Know What You Chew

Do you still remember what chewing gums or bubble gums felt like when we were kids or teenagers? It was fun, relaxed, giving you that careless mood. As we grow older, chewing gums is considered impolite. Or they are even damaging. Little that we know, chewing gum has more interesting facts than your next-door neighbor.

But before we jump right into the nitty-gritty, have you noticed the differences between chewing gums and bubble gums?

CHEWING GUMS VS BUBBLE GUMS

Have you ever tried to chew and blow your gum, but you can't seem to blow a single bubble? Probably it's because you're chewing on chewing gum, not bubble gum. The primary difference between these two is that bubble gum's main objective is to make bubbles. Hence, it is more elastic and stretchy. It expands to your will. Whereas the opposite of chewing gum. That's why chewing gum tends to be smaller, but it is chewier.

Which one was made first? Chewing gum or bubble gum?

In 1928, an accountant was working in a chewing gum factory. He was trying out and experimenting with all kinds of gum recipes. He came up with a slightly less sticky formula than regular chewing gum one day. He found that it was also super stretchy and that you could blow bubbles out of it. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), when he was completing the gum formula, pink was the only food coloring available. So voila! Pink is the most common color for bubble gums nowadays. Thanks, Walter Diemer!

Now that we've ﬁgured it out that bubble gums existed because Walter Diemer was working in the chewing gum factory, what about chewing gum itself? Who invented it?

Around 9,000 years ago, Some Europeans chewed birch bark tar daily. The ancient Mayans chewed a sticky resin that came from trees. It's called Chicle (ring a bell to you?). Native North Americans chewed gum made from spruce tree sap. Probably that's how a man named John B. Curtis was able to develop and sell the ﬁrst commercial chewing gum called The State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum in 1848.

Flavors and Purposes

Since the original bubble gum was pink in color that tasted strawberry, along the way, the colors and ﬂavors developed into other bright fruity ﬂavors such as blueberry, grape, watermelon, and many other sweet ﬂavors. It's been associated with a fun and trendy lifestyle.
On the other hand, chewing gum has limited colors and uses mint ﬂavors, like peppermint or spearmint. Hence, it's mintier and less sweet. It's been advertised for having beneﬁcial purposes for our teeth, exercising the jaw muscles, and improving the breath. How so? Let's get to it now.

INTERESTING (SOME ARE FUN) FACTS ABOUT GUMS

In these modern days, just with the touch of our ﬁngers, we can easily ﬁnd all sorts of facts about something. Including gums. Here are some of them:

Nowadays, most companies use synthetic gum base rubbers such as butadiene-styrene rubber, polyvinyl acetate, polyethylene, etc. They make a longer-lasting ﬂavor, improve texture, and reduce tackiness.
One of the synthetic components, polyethylene, belongs to a joint plastics group. It's used in products from plastic bags to hula hoops.
Morning sickness? Chew on sugarless mint or ginger gums. They soothe an upset stomach. That includes motion sickness.
Chewing sugarless gum for 20 minutes after mealtime can help protect our teeth by removing food debris (therefore preventing cavities) and increasing our saliva ﬂow. The saliva strengthens tooth enamel because it contains phosphate and calcium.
When we chew on gum, our saliva glands produce 250% more than our normal state. So we swallow more.
This gesture helps balance the pressure in our heads when traveling on an airplane. Chewing gum will keep our ears from popping. (But don't ever try this on babies, please.)
Chewing gum also increases blood ﬂow to our brain, which has many beneﬁcial effects, including ﬁghting drowsiness and improving our memory. It has also been proven to reduce muscle tension and increase our body's alertness.
A 2011 study showed that chewing gums twice daily for 14 days improves the levels of anxiety, depression, fatigue, and other mental illness in healthy young adults.
If you're prone to having occasional gastroesophageal reﬂux disease (GERD), chewing a stick of gum after a meal can lower the acid levels in your esophagus. This can then help to reduce acid reﬂux and heartburn.
Do your eyes get teary when cutting onions? Try chewing gums while doing it. It helps prevent you from crying (unless you have a heartbreak).
Accidentally swallowed gum? Don't panic. It won't clog up your intestines, but it will be inside your body for a few days (not years, as the myth says). In most cases, it will pass through the system as quickly as any other food and in one piece. Because gum base is not water-soluble, it can't be digested and won't dissolve in our system.
Can't seem to make your bubble bigger than a size of a marble? Try blowing it slowly. It allows the bubble gum to stretch and grow.
There is a record for the biggest bubble gum bubble in 2004 by Chad Fell, an American who blew three pieces of gum into a bubble up to twice the size of a basketball - over 50 cm around!

THE PITFALLS

The gum waste.
Removal of gum waste usually works with a steam jet and scraper, but it's a painstaking process and labor-intensive. In Rome, around 15,000 pieces of chewed gum are scraped daily, and the removal of each piece costs the city one Euro. Britain spends more than £150 million annually on gum disposal efforts using high-pressure steam hoses,
corrosive materials, and freezing machines to keep their sidewalks and public spaces gum-free. No wonder some countries banned gums. And there has been much effort in public education to encourage responsible disposal.

LUCKILY…

Research has been conducted to develop a less adhesive gum that degrades within days or weeks. There was one UK-based gum brand that was launched in 2010. It was designed to be easily removed from any surface because it dispersed over a short time scale when in contact with water.

Sounds cool, right? It could win the year's innovation award for ﬁghting all sticky problems. But for some reason, in 2012, this gum was withdrawn from the US market…

There's still hope, though.
Although chewing gum is the second most common form of litter (second only to cigarette litter), people are still continuously ﬁnding ways to make eco-friendly gums or recycling methods that work. Special waste containers for gum have been created by smart-thinking inventors that then recycle the gums into rubber toys or containers.

Another example of a fantastic inventor slash designer is Anna Bullus from Britain. In 2018, she created a method of collecting and recycling chewing gum into plastic. Her company made recycled gums into other plastics products such as shoe soles, rubber boots, and plastic cups. Awesome!

We hope it will make other aspiring inventors develop new ways to make our chewable gums friendlier to our beloved Mother Earth.

Author: Wuxi Gum Base
Publication Date: 7/20/2021