The most important ingredient in chewing gum

Updated at 15:31 on April 1, 2025

At the turn of the 20th century, William Wrigley Jr. He bowed to build a rubber empire and, as part of his extensive discomfort, convinced the United States Department of War to include his products in the portions of soldiers. His argument, since then, was that the chewing gum had miraculous skills to turn off the thirst, to avoid hunger and to dissipate the nerve tension. But he was right: scientists have since found that gum chewing can increase concentration, reduce boosting, relieve thirst and improve oral health.

Perhaps that is why people around the world have been driven to sprout attractive materials (roots, resins, twigs, blubber, tar made by the birch bark) for at least 8,000 years. Today, the rubber is commercialized as a panacea for well -being. You can buy rubber designed to provide energy, nutrition, stress relief or joint health; Scientists are even developing gums that can be protected from flu, herpes and Covid. Ironically, this new age of chewing rubber is made of a differently modern ingredient, which is usually not associated with well -being: plastic.

When Wrigley started their company, Americans had become accustomed to chewing chewing gum sold as candy-covered balls or packed sticks. The basis of these chewing gums was made of natural substances such as resin and fir chicles, a natural latex that Aztecs and Mayans chewed for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Unfortunately, for twentieth-century Americans, Chicozapote trees that run the chicicle take great to grow and, if they are excessive, die. In addition, cultivated trees do not produce almost as many chicles as wild trees, says Jennifer Mathews, anthropology professor at Trinity University and author of Trice. In the 1950’s, Chicicle gatherers began to fight to meet demand. Thus, gum companies aimed at the newest news in material science: gums and synthetic plastics.

Today, the base of the rubber of most companies is a mixture of synthetic and natural ingredients: if a package lists “rubber base” as an ingredient, which the rubber probably contains synthetic polymers. The FDA allows the rubber base to contain any of the dozens of approved food quality materials, the substances that are considered safe for human consumption or are sure to be in contact with food. Many, however, are not substances that people would differently would like to put in their mouths. They include polyethylene (the most common type of plastic, used in plastic bags and milk jars), polyvinil acetate (a plastic that is also found in glue) and rubber-butadiene rubber (which is commonly used on car tires). Gwendolyn Graff told me The typical rubber base contains two to four types of synthetic plastics or gums, Gwendolyn Graff, a pastry consultant.

Talking to industry experts, I began to understand that many of GUM’s most attractive qualities come from synthetic polymers. Polyvinil acetate, for example, strengthens the bubble movie. “If you blow a bubble and start putting holes and deflates, it is usually an indicator that has no polyvinil acetate,” Graff said. Rubber Styrene-Butadiene creates a rebound masticing that causes the little girl to stick to herself instead of surfaces like teeth. Polyethylene can be used to soften the gum so that it does not tire the jaw. The gums with only natural polymers “may feel that they will fall to your mouth,” said Graff.

Plastic rubber, however, also melts, so that the gum chewing has been linked to microplastic ingestion. In a study published in December, UK researchers had a voluntary chewing on a rubber band for an hour, spitting in test tubes as they went. After an hour of chewing rubber, the saliva collected contained more than 250,000 pieces of micro and nano plastics, comparable to the level of microplastics found in a liter of bottled water. In a study presented at a recent meeting of the American Chemical Society (which has not yet been reviewed by equals), the saliva of a graduate student contained high microplastic levels after chewing various gums commercially available, including natural ones. Research on chewing rubber and microplastics is still limited: these two works effectively represent the analysis of only two people in the post-steep saliva, but rubber chewing has also been correlated with highest levels of urine ftalats, plastic chemicals that are known that are known endocrine disruptors.

Scientists are still learning about the health impacts of microplastic ingestion. Microplastics are found in all types of foods from packaging or pollution during manufacture, or because plants and animals eat absorbing and ingesting microplastics. As a result, microplastics have been found in human livers, kidneys, brains, lungs, intestines, placenta and breast milk, but exactly as our bodies absorb, disperse and excrete ingested plastic is not very well studied, according to Marcus Garcia, which investigates the effects of the health of the environmental pollutants of the University of Nou Mexico. Some investigations in cultivated mice and cells suggest that microplastics have the potential for damage and that epidemiological research suggests that microplastics are associated with respiratory, digestive and reproductive problems, as well as colon and lung cancer. But scientists still try to understand whether microplastics cause disease, which microplastics are most dangerous to human health and the amount of microplastic that the body can take before seeing negative effects.

The answer could affect the future of what we choose to eat or chew. Ingesting small plastic particles may seem inevitable, but for the last ten years, North -Americans have become a fear that plastic pieces enter our food, worrying on microwave foods in plastic containers and drinking from plastic bottles. The rubber has mostly not triggered these concerns, but in recent years, its popularity has fallen for other reasons. In order to reverse this trend, gum companies market rubber synthetic as a tool for well -being. Like Wrigley, they are committed to the fact that the North -Americans will believe in the power of the gum to calm the nerves and cure the ailments, and they will not think too much about what is really modern rubber. For anyone worried about swallowing even more plastic, after all, the rubber is easy enough to avoid.

This article was originally mistaken for Gwendolyn Graff the idea that the strengths of the rubber come from synthetic polymers.