Chewing gum
Most of us love chewing gum. It’s fun! When we chew gum, we want to blow it as a big balloon. The balloon blows, the eyes are wide open: When is it going to pop?
While chewing gum, have you ever thought about questions like “How and when was chewing gum invented? Who chewed it first? What did the first gum taste like?” Let’s read the history of gum.
The invention of gum and the habit of chewing dates back to ancient times, around 6000 years ago! Archaeologists have found gum-like substances during excavations around Sweden and Finland. It is thought that people living in these regions in ancient times chewed the sticky substance they obtained from birch bark tar. They chewed the gum not for fun or relaxation as we do now, but to clean their teeth, cure bad breath and relieve their stomachs. Also, the colour of the gum was not white or colourful, but grey.
Ancient Greeks and Romans also discovered the white resin of the gum tree in their region. They called this sticky substance mastic. Scientists believe that people in this period also chewed gum for oral health.
With its freshness and sweet smell, this chewing gum is still collected from trees and sold as mastic gums today. This precious tree where the chewing gum comes from grows on Chios Island and the Çeşme Peninsula in Turkey.
People living in Africa made chewing gum from the sap of the acacia tree. The sap has an orange pink colour and a rubber-like structure. This substance, known as acacia gum or gum Arabic, was used both as chewing gum and as an adhesive. Egyptians used it to preserve their mummies. Some Italian painters used it to make paint and glue. In India, it was used to make medicine.
In Australia, gum was obtained from eucalyptus tree. It’s no surprise that koalas chew the tree’s leaves for so long! Lemurs and monkeys soften the sap in tree stems with their saliva in their mouths and then chew it.
In Southeast Asia, gum was obtained from the ginseng plant. Americans chewed the resin collected from spruce trees. In Mexico, people made a kind of chewing gum called “chicle” by drying the resin of the tree known as sapodilla.
Hundreds of years later, the production of chewing gum changed completely. In the late 1860s, Thomas Adams tried adding flavourings to natural rubber and could make a tasty chewing gum. It was then started to be produced in factories to be sold. That’s how packaged chewing gums entered people’s lives.
Natural chewing gum is still chewed to avoid bad breath and relieve the stomach as well as strengthen the jaw muscles. But most of the packaged, colourful and sweet chewing gums sold in markets contain sweeteners, flavour and colour additives. These substances are harmful for our health. For this reason, you should read the package of chewing gum before buying it and learn the ingredients it contains.
As the chewing gum gradually became more popular, other producers tried to find different formulae. In 1928, Walter Dimer achieved in making gum that could blow bubbles. By using natural rubber in the right amount, he made a chewing gum that was thin but strong enough not to break and soft enough to be chewed.
When you swallow chewing gum, don’t worry, it won’t stick to your stomach. It’ll break down in the stomach and is evacuated in the poop within a few days. Still, be careful not to swallow while chewing gum!
