When you unwrap a piece of chewing gum and pop it into your

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About
GUM
By Patricia Nikolina Clark
When you unwrap a piece of chewing gum and pop it into your
mouth, did you know you are biting into history? The chewy
history of gum goes back a long way—to ancient times.
Humans have been chewing
gum for thousands of years.
Many scientists believe humans
are born with the urge to chew
because chewing relieves stress
and quenches thirst.
Archaeologists have evidence
that, around 10,000 years ago,
Stone Age people chewed resin
found in pine trees. Early Maya
Indians in Mexico and Central
America chewed chicle, a gummy
substance that oozed from the
bark of sapodilla trees. And when
the Pilgrims came to America
in the 1600s, they learned that
Native Americans enjoyed
the tangy resin produced by spruce
trees.
The gum we chew today is
Gummy Graffiti
In San Luis Obispo, California,
there is a tourist attraction
called Bubble Gum Alley. Its
walls are covered
with thousands
of already
chewed wads
of bubble
gum. Yuck!
not the same gum the Pilgrims
or the Maya enjoyed. Today, gum
base is made from chemicals, a
mixture of plastic and natural
latex, produced in factories. Unlike
the rubbery resin scraped off
spruce trees, our gum comes
in colorful wrappers or coated with
candy.
Gum for Sale
In 1848, John Curtis, a New
Englander, was the first to sell
gum. Curtis and his son boiled
spruce resin to remove bugs and
bits of bark. Then they poured the
resin onto a slab and rolled it into
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sheets. They cut the sheets into
smaller strips, which they coated
with cornmeal so the strips
wouldn’t stick together. After
wrapping the gum strips in
tissue paper, they sold batches
of 20 sticks packaged in small
wooden boxes.
They called their product State
of Maine Pure Spruce Gum. Sold
at first to local markets, the gum
became so popular that, within
four years, Curtis & Son had built
the world’s first chewing gum
factory, in Portland, Maine.
Big Business
In the years since then, gum
has gone through many changes,
and many people have made their
fortunes from satisfying our urge
to chew. One of the most famous is
William Wrigley Jr. He was a soap
salesman, working for his father
in the 1800s.
Wrigley came up with the idea
of giving out spruce chewing gum
to his customers as a premium,
or reward, for buying a certain
amount of soap. But he soon
discovered that people liked the
gum much more than the soap!
It wasn’t long before he started
a chewing gum business. He
experimented with the popular
Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit and
Spearmint gums, which are still
produced a gum that you could
peel off your face after a bubble
burst. But the gum was gray and
looked unappetizing. When he
dumped the gum in pink coloring,
the only color he had on hand,
Dubble Bubble was born.
Gummy
Gulp
Swallowed
gum takes
one to three
days to pass through your
digestive system. That’s
because, unlike food, gum
doesn’t break down. The
combination of plastic and latex
stays in one place and cannot be
digested.
Gum: The Good and
the Bad
sold today.
In 1915, Wrigley, a master
of advertising, did something
astounding: he sent a four-stick
package of gum to every one of the
1,500,000 people listed in the U.S.
phone book!
Around the same time, Henry
and Frank Fleer invented the first
candy-coated gum, called Chiclets,
and the first bubble gum, called
Blibber-Blubber.
But the brothers could not sell
Blibber-Blubber because it was
so sticky. When a bubble popped
on your face, it was almost
impossible to scrape off.
Years later, Walter Diemer, who
worked for the Fleers, decided to
solve the sticky problem. For more
than a year, he brewed different
batches of gum. He finally
Dates to
Chew On
1848 John Curtis
is the first to sell
gum.
1600
The bad news is that more than
half the weight of a stick of gum is
sugar, which can cause cavities.
But the good news is that chewing
gum causes more saliva to f low,
which washes the sugar—and food
particles—into your stomach. So
chewing gum after a snack can be
helpful, especially if the gum is
sugarless. And some scientists
claim that, besides relieving stress,
chewing gum makes you more
alert.
All this gabbing about gum
should prove useful. The next time
you consider unwrapping
a stick of gum, you’ll be able to
weigh gum’s good points versus
its bad!
Chewy Chicle
A 9,000-year-old glob of
chewed gum was found in
Sweden. The honey-sweetened
gob of chicle bore tooth marks
that appeared to be those of
a teenager.
1985 Susan Montgomery
Williams blows a 22-inch
bubble, setting a world record.
2015
1600s Pilgrims discover
Native Americans
chewing pine resin.
1915 William Wrigley Jr. sends a
four-stick pack of gum to
everyone listed in the phone book.
© Highlights for Children, Inc. This item from classroom.highlights.com is permitted to be used by a teacher free of charge for classroom
use by printing or photocopying one copy for each student in the class. Highlights® Fun with a Purpose®