This creates a source of income for locals. “The extraction of resin is a natural method. “No trees are ever cut down,” he said, suggesting that heightened demand for chicle could help to reduce the clearance of rainforest for soy, sugar, coffee, and palm oil cultivation. He said True Gum marks an overdue return to the use of tree resin, which had been largely swapped out for petroleum products by manufacturers in the 20th century in a rush to meet mass demand. They carried out countless home experiments with an array of natural ingredients before alighting on chicle – a product made from the sap of Central American Manilkara trees that the Aztecs and Mayans historically used as a chewing gum.Ĭo-founder Peter Juul Regnersgaard sees the use of the ingredient as a chance to “work with local cooperatives in a way that discourages deforestation of rainforests.” How long does chewing gum take to decompose Chewing gum is made of synthetic rubber, which can take years to decompose. Swapping out the synthetic bits of conventional gum initially proved tricky for the team. Speaking to AFN, Miller said he had enjoyed the taste of True Gum and loved the concept, hailing it as “sustainable to the core” and predicting that it’ll be “popular with modern consumers.” It’s off to gum we go! Since April 2018, the startup has successfully positioned its sustainable alternative across more than 10,000 retail outlets spanning 14 European countries. The team has just raised €1 million ($1.2 million) from German VC Oyster Bay - run by veteran food and beverage consumer goods entrepreneur Christoph Miller - to further expand the business and enter new markets. Now running what it describes as the “smallest chewing gum factory in the world” in Copenhagen, it’s capable of producing 350 kilograms a day. So in 2017 they founded True Gum, a startup developing plastic-free and plant-based chewing gums with novel flavor varieties like ginger, turmeric, vanilla, and matcha. They learnt that gum is made with a synthetic, petroleum-derived rubber base, which contains several of the same materials found in plastic bottles, glue, and car tires.īut they still wanted to chew gum. That was the view of four entrepreneurs - also in Denmark - who’d just watched The Dark Side of the Chew, a muck-raking documentary exposing the murky practices of the global chewing gum industry. Nonetheless, modern gum’s glacially slow biodegradability is generally seen as troubling for the environment.

Granted, this slow rate of decay may have an upside for some – including archaeologists, like those in Denmark examining ancient birch tar chewing gum to trace Neolithic human DNA. That’s a lot of sticking around for just a few minutes of minty freshness. So chew on this, and stick to your gum’s intended use.Here’s a fact to chew over: spit out a stick of conventional chewing gum, and it will decompose – in roughly 1,600 years. This is especially a concern for young children, who may not know that gum isn’t supposed to be swallowed or who can’t help themselves and swallow it anyway. If gum swallowing becomes a habit, it could cause constipation or even block the digestive tract (admittedly, in rare cases). This doesn’t give you a pass to swallow gum on the regular, though. Unanchored dentures are placed on top of the gum line, but they do not. After you swallow gum, it usually continues its journey right through your digestive tract, and in a few days, comes out the other end. If this irritation is prolonged, the gums will separate from the teeth causing.

The good news, however, is that even though your body doesn’t want it, that gum resin is NOT sentenced to seven years in your tum-tum.

While your body will happily soak up the sugar and other digestible ingredients (which can add up to a lot of calories if you don’t opt for sugar-free gum!), you can’t digest the gum resin. That can’t be true, right?Ĭhewing gum is usually made of a combination of natural or synthetic materials (gum resin), preservatives, flavorings, and sweeteners. Sure, gum is meant to be chewed, not swallowed-but hey, accidents happen! Your mom probably admonished you that swallowed gum could get stuck there for years (for some reason, seven years is the number thrown around over and over).

Does gum decompose