Hey guys, Amy with you on DNews today talking about that most obnoxious of habits: gum chewing.
Whether you were told a gum-tree would grow in your tummy or that swallowed gum would
stick around for seven years, pretty much everyone was told to never swallow gum…
But why?
What would happen if you did?
So let’s start with the obvious.
When we chew food, it disintegrates - that’s because we have an enzyme in our saliva that,
along with chewing, starts breaking down food.
Then we swallow it, and proteins and enzymes in our stomach breaks the food down further
so all the necessary nutrients are ready to be absorbed by our intestines.
What isn’t absorbed is excreted as waste along with other by-products our body wants
to get rid of.
But gum doesn’t disintegrate no matter how much we chew it and slobber on it… it just
doesn’t start going through the digestive process in our mouths!
And this isn’t a new discovery.
Archaeologists have found tooth-marked lumps of birch bark tar dating back to the Mesolithic
period of the Stone Age.
Ancient Greek women chewed mastic to clean their teeth and freshen their breath; Native
Americans taught colonists they could quench their thirst by chewing a resin from spruce
trees; and in the 19th century, people chewed sweetened paraffin wax.
Until the Second World War, the base of gum was chicle, the latex sap from the sapodilla
trees.
Modern gum uses a synthetic or natural rubber that mimics the properties chicle… it’s
rubber mixed with sweetener and flavours that release into your mouth when you chew it…
appetizing, eh?
So swallowing gum comes down to swallowing rubber, which just sounds like it'd be bad
for your body!
I mean, the FDA classifies gum as a "nonnutritive masticatory substance”!
The bad part is that gum's base - that rubber - is not digestible; our bodies can break
down some of the sugars that give gum its sweetness and flavour but the wad of rubber
isn’t getting broken down.
On the plus side, our bodies have other ways of getting things out; our digest tract is
an active place.
Muscle contractions that move food through our bodies will help the gum wad along, and
it’ll eventually come out the other end.
It’s sort of like the husks of corn seeds.
Our bodies can’t digest them, but they don’t just pile up in our stomachs.
If you look closely, you’ll notice you pass those husks in a few hours or couple of days,
depending on your own digestive system.
But that doesn’t mean you should make a habit of swallowing gum.
Because it doesn’t get broken down, your body is pushing a significant mass through
your system, and if you add to that mass you could end up with an intestinal obstruction,
basically a blockage in the one tube that processes everything.
The immediate symptoms are stomach aches and constipation, but left untreated an obstruction
can get much worse.
But this is super rare.
So swallowing that one piece of gum probably isn’t going to kill you, but still, try
not to do it.
And need something to do while chewing that gum?
Why not binge on Sex Sent Me to the ER!
You can watch all the fun and other Discovery Life shows on the Discovery Life Go App!
Check it out and download for free at your App Store.
We once looked into whether or not gum is better than flossing; you can find the answer
here.
What weird gum myth have you heard?
Let us know in the comments, don’t forget to like this video and subscribe so you never
miss an episode of DNews.