Did you know chewing gum originated more than 5000 years ago?
How many of you love chewing gum? After all, it’s the only fun way to form a bubble and then pop it. Now, here’s another question. Instead of a chewing gum, if you are ever offered a wad or a tree sap or a handful of rubber bands, would you chew on them? If this seems like a weird question, it really isn’t. In fact, what most people don’t know is that, all these have something in common with a chewing gum. Wondering what? Let’s find out.
The birth of chewing gum
Chewing gum wasn’t born in a day. It evolved through civilisations and generations. In fact, the earliest piece of chewing gum ever discovered is thought to be 9000 years old. But not much is known about that time. What’s known instead is chewing gum existed in different forms since the Neolithic period, that dates back 5000 years ago. It was then made from the tar of birch tree’s bark, as evident from tooth imprints in fossils unearthed in Kierikki, Finland in the early 20th century. However, back then, people didn’t use it as a flavoured and recreational gum, it was more popular for its antiseptic properties and other medicinal qualities.
Chicle, the first popular chewing gum
Chewing gum first became popular in the hands of the ancient Central American tribes such as the Mayans and the Aztecs. In fact, they were also the first to exploit its other positive qualities, such as taste stimuli, teeth cleanser and breath-freshener. This was all thanks to a widely available natural tree gum called chicle (milky latex of the sapodilla tree, that is native to Central America and now used as the principal gum-making ingredient after coagulation). In fact, not only did these ancient tribes use chicle as a chewing gum, but also as a way to stick everyday objects together.
Following in the footsteps of the Mayans and the Aztecs, the ancient Greeks too found their own chewing gum in mastiche (a gum derived from the resin of mastic tree) and used it for maintaining their oral hygiene. Some other examples of chewing gum that were used during the early civilisations were ginseng plant roots by the Chinese, blubber by the Eskimos, sugar pine and spruce sap by the Native Americans, coca leaves by South Americans, betel nuts in India, kola nuts in tropical West Africa and tobacco leaves in the USA.
Commercialisation of chewing gum
Like most things, chewing gum too was commercialised by the Americans in the 19th century. In fact, the first commercial chewing gum was developed and sold by a businessman John B. Curtis in New England in 1848. It was called ‘The State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum.’ As the name suggests, this gum was developed from the sap of spruce trees. However, it wasn’t before long, when a gum was made out of paraffin wax that went on to exceed spruce gum in popularity. Back then, people used powdered sugar and repeatedly soaked the gum in it before chomping. Interestingly, the first patent for chewing gum was filed by Ohio-based dentist William F. Semple in 1869. Maybe, he was the first one to realise that chewing gum stimulates saliva production which in turn helps in neutralising acids present in the mouth that often lead to teeth decay.
The first flavoured chewing gum
It wasn’t until the late 1870s that the first flavoured chewing gum was born in the hands of John Colgan, a Kentucky-based pharmacist. He mixed the aromatic tolu (a powder obtained from the extract of balsam tree) with powdered sugar and layered it on top of chicle. He called the gum ‘Taffy Tolu.’ In fact, Colgan is often regarded as the pioneer of modern-day chewing gum making. Chicle was extensively used as the primary gum-making ingredient till the World War II and was often preferred for its non-dissolvable and easily chewable quality.
But soon after the World War was over and chewing gum rose to popularity for its multiple uses (most importantly curbing appetite), chemists around the world started looking for a better alternative to chicle. This is when they came upon synthetic rubber, and the rest as they say is history. Butadiene-based synthetic rubber infused with sugar and flavourings (chocolate, strawberry, orange etc.) beat chicle in both taste and cost of production.