Nourishments—

Something To Chew On

By Nancy K. Crevier

One of the marvelous things about my grandfather was his ability to make anything grow in the garden. As a little girl, though, I was most impressed by a particular tree he grew that I never actually got to lay eyes on, The Bubble Gum Tree. Whenever my sisters and I visited him at the girls’ camp where he was groundskeeper, he always greeted us with a handful of the fruits — which he had traveled deep into the forest to pick just before our arrival — of that mysterious shrub.  The rectangular pink pieces looked remarkably like the Bazooka Joe that we bought at the local five and dime, but who were we to argue? We had gum.

Bubble gum, even from The Bubble Gum Tree, was not my favorite type of gum, though. I preferred the intensely sweet flavor of a good stick of Juicy Fruit or Beech Nut Stripes, or the novelty of chomping on a piece of Black Jack.

I would never go so far as to put gum into the nutritious category, particularly when it has fallen so far from the original plant-based resin, chicle, and spruce sap chewing materials that endeared it to the ancient Greeks, Mayans and Native Americans. There is something to be said for the fun factor of endless chewing, snapping, and bubble blowing, however.

Commercial gum first blew onto the scene in 1848 when John B. Curtis sold packs of State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum. Two years later, he improved on his gum business, selling flavored paraffin-based gums.

By the late 1800s, Tutti-Fruitti and Dentyne gums were being sold to the public, and in 1906, Frank Fleer invented Blibber-Blubber gum, the first bubble-blowing gum. The recipe was later refined by Walter Diemer and introduced to the public as Double Bubble.

The later gums were based on chicle and other latexes that provided a smoother, more flavorful alternative, with a longer-lasting chewability compared to the paraffin or spruce-based chewing gums. Today, the more than 1,000 gum recipes in the United States, closely guarded by each individual manufacturer, are made from synthetic materials that make gum even more elastic and smooth, and powdered sugar, glucose syrup, flavorings, colors, and softeners.

There are eight basic steps to create a stick, ball, or block of gum, according to the National Association of Chewing Gum Manufacturers (NACGM). Gum base ingredients are first melted together. The sugar, syrup, and flavoring are next added slowly to the base to make a thick dough. Extruders then knead and form the gum.

Once the gum is formed, it is shaped. Flattened sticks, ropes of gum, or molded shapes are next sprinkled with a powdered sweetener to prevent it from sticking to machinery and packaging.

The gum is then cooled in a temperature-controlled room until it is set. At this point, candy coated gums are then sprayed with liquid sweetener over and over until the proper thickness desired for the candy shell is reached.

The gum is finally wrapped in airtight wrappers before shipping.

What every child has heard, and certainly what my grandfather warned us every time he dispensed the Bubble Gum Tree treat, is that gum is to be chewed, not swallowed. Under certain threat of a long, painful death caused by undigested gum stuck to the walls of our innards, I dutifully chomped on the mass of sweetness until it became a flavorless wad, and then deposited it in the trash. When I occasionally did swallow my gum, I lay awake for hours wondering how long before the slow, inevitable demise began to take hold. If I had only known then that while gum is pretty much indigestible, it passes through the system like any other food, and just as quickly, I could have saved myself some sleepless nights. Why I never noticed that other kids were not dropping like flies around me from swallowing their gum, I’ll never know.

Gum did not always end up in the trash, though. A windy day plus long hair plus gum in the mouth always seemed to equal a knot of stickiness in the tresses. My mother preferred to just cut out the offending wad, leaving a strange gap in my haircut. Kneading a bit of mineral or cooking oil, or peanut butter into the gum, though, can help dissolve the mass and remove it from the hair in a messier but less noticeable manner than chopping out a hunk of hair.

When somehow — and no one ever knows who or how — gum ends up on clothing or on carpeting, the NACGM recommends scraping away the excess gum and rubbing the area with ice until the gum can be rolled off. Deep-heating rub can also be massaged into the opposite side of the gum on clothing, heated with a blow dryer for 30 seconds, and peeled away.

Gum can be a fun treat. While I prefer the zesty, minty gum flavors of recent years to the dusty flavor of bubble gum, I still have a place in my heart for those hard pink squares of Bazooka Joe. Their sweetness goes beyond the sugar with which they are made.