However, Adams and his sons found that heating chicle with sugar and flavor yielded a gum superior to paraffin-based predecessors. Americans were soon chewing Blackjack, the first flavored gum. Blackjack gum consisted of three major ingredients: gum base, sugar, and licorice flavoring. Gum's basic recipe??? It is used by modern manufacturers including Cadbury Adams as Adams' company is now known and Wrigley , among others.
Although the recipe has not changed, the base has. Like spruce sap and paraffin before it, even the sapodilla-derived chicle was fated for replacement. It was World War II that did it in. Widespread trading of gum rations by U. The tree's sap is collected by workers who climb the trees and use machetes to tap the sap, she says. A single tapping yields only 2.
Chemistry came to the rescue, and since WWII gum manufacturers have relied almost exclusively on synthetic gum bases. What exactly are these synthetic bases made of? Here is where things get sticky. Each type of gum, from those best suited to simply chew or those designed for blowing huge bubbles, requires a slightly different base. According to gum research and company websites, we're often chewing on synthetic polymers—styrene-butadiene rubber, polyethylene, polyvinyl acetate—with a bit of natural latex thrown in.
The various ingredients in gum are not listed on the back of the package. Even if every tiny pack of gum bore a label, the many ingredients that make gum chewy can legally be lumped together as "gum base.
Gum makers continue to improve their products. Gum base is big business, but the purpose of any gum base is the same.
Most gum makers market their products as candy, but others have stretched gum's use. There now are gums to help kick smoking and others to protect your teeth. There are gums that deliver caffeine and vitamins. Wrigley started out as a soap salesman in his native Philadelphia.
After moving to Chicago in , he began offering store owners incentives to stock his products, such as free cans of baking powder with every order. When the baking powder proved a bigger hit than the soap, Wrigley sold that instead, and added in free packs of chewing gum as a promotion.
In , the Wrigley Company kicked off a campaign in which it sent free samples of its gum to millions of Americans listed in phone books. Another promotion entailed sending sticks of gum to U. Competition also played a role in the development of bubble gum. Frank Fleer, whose company had made chewing gum since around , wanted something different from his rivals and spent years working on a product that could be blown into bubbles. As William Wrigley, Jr. Today bubble gum is probably more popular than chewing gum, at least among young people.
In , however, the first attempt to make bubble gum failed when consumers found "Blibber Blubber" too wet and grainy. It wasn't until that Walter Diemer, a young employee of the Fleer company, developed an acceptable bubble gum, marketed as "Dubble Bubble.
During the s and s, the invention of synthetic rubbers assisted chewing gum manufacturers greatly, because they no longer had to rely on irregular supplies of imported natural rubber. Although basic chewing gum has stayed about the same for over a century, several different types have recently become available. For instance, sugarless gum debuted in the s, along with nicotine gum, liquid center gum, athlete's gum, chewing gum that doesn't stick to dental work, and bubble gum that doesn't stick to the face.
More recently, some manufacturers have tried adding abrasives to chewing gum, marketing it as good for the teeth. The manufacture of chewing gum in the United States has come a long way from loggers chopping off wads of spruce gum for chewing pleasure, yet the base of the gum remains the sap of various rubber trees, or, in most cases, a synthetic substitute for such sap.
Natural gum bases include latexes like chicle, jelutong, gutta-percha, and pine rosin. Increasingly, natural resins other than chicle have been used because chicle is in extremely short supply: a chicle tree yields only 35 ounces one kilogram of chicle every three to four years, and no chicle plantations were ever established. However, natural latex in general is being replaced by synthetic substitutes.
Most modern chewing gum bases use either no natural rubber at all, or a minimal amount ranging from ten to twenty percent, with synthetic rubbers such as butadiene-styrene rubber, polyethylene, and polyvinyl acetate making up the rest. After the latex used to form bases, the most common ingredient in chewing gum is some type of sweetener. A typical stick contains 79 percent sugar or artificial sweetener. Natural sugars include cane sugar, corn syrup, or dextrose, and artificial sweeteners can be saccharine or aspartame.
Popular mint flavors such as spearmint and peppermint are usually provided by oils extracted from only the best, most aromatic plants. Thus, while the aroma of a stick of spearmint gum is quite strong, flavoring comprises only one percent of the gum's total weight. Fruit flavors generally derive from artificial flavorings, because the amount of fruit grown cannot meet the demand.
For example, apple flavor comes from ethyl acetate, and cherry from benzaldehyde. In addition to sweeteners and flavorings, preservatives such as butylated hydroxytoluene and softeners like refined vegetable oil are added to keep the gum fresh, soft, and moist. Fillers such as calcium carbonate and corn starch are also common. This vagueness is mainly due to the chewing gum manufacturers' insistence that all materials used are part of a trade secret formula.
While the specific ingredients in gum might be a secret, the process for making gum is not. The first chewing gum making machine wasn't even patented, and today the procedure is considered standard throughout the industry. A recent development has been the introduction of gums with a liquid center. To make this gum, the gum base is extruded to form a hollow rope. Faced with a shortage of chicle, chewing gum manufacturers started switching to synthetic, petroleum-derived bases, essentially introducing Americans to the modern-day gums we chew today.
While almost all contemporary chewing gum is made with these synthetic bases, there are exceptions. Several small-scale gum companies are using sustainable practices to reintroduce chicle-based gums to American consumers. While in Guatemala on a Kellogg Fellowship in the early s, she developed an extreme fondness for sapodilla trees, and came to believe that, if she did things right, they could be tapped for their precious chicle once more.
Chicle, on the other hand, has this natural combination of waxiness and rubberiness that creates a perfect mouthfeel. But in the end, she found that it was pretty easy. After melting down the chicle, which you can buy online, she mixed it with natural flavorings, like strawberry and mint.
Homemade chewing gum. These days, along with actual gum, Glee sells a gum kit so you, too, can try making your own. It's something Schimberg feels can help dispel the mystery of what we've been putting in our mouths for all of these years.
Picking up a bag of Glee bubble gum at a neighborhood market the other day, I popped a few of the candy-coated pellets in my mouth and began to chew. Unlike regular gum, it had a smoother, almost velvety feel to it. The flavor didn't last as long as it does in the stuff I normally chew, but I found the chewing experience to be far more pleasurable. The gum was softer, more pliable—more natural.
Walking home, I started thinking about all the plastic and polymers I've been chewing all these years. Though I'll probably continue to chew them ain't no way I'm giving up my Orbit , I'll also consider how ancient the practice is. I will picture those big sapodilla trees down in Mexico that made it possible. More than I ever did before, I'll think about it. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile.
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