The Evolution of Chewing Gum As A Breath Freshener

We can thank the ancient Greeks for first introducing the idea for chewing gum. They chewed mastic gum (pronounced mas-tee-ka), which is the resin obtained from the bark of the mastic tree, a shrublike tree found mainly in Greece and Turkey. The Grecian women, more so than the men, favored chewing mastic gum to clean their teeth and sweeten their breath.

Not too long after the Greeks started chewing mastic gum, the ancient Mayans were chewing on the sap from a different tree (the Sapodilla tree), which actually produced a sap called 'chicle' which is exactly where much of the gum in the US comes from. What's most interesting is that although the Mayan civilization literally disappeared overnight in about the year 800, the only Mayan practice that still exists is that of chewing gum.

Closer to home, meanwhile, the American Indians of New England were also chewing gum, but made from the resin of spruce trees. Although chicle-based gums would ultimately win out in the US, the first gums ever marketed in the US were those based from the resin of spruce trees. Then, during the mid 1800s, paraffin wax gum combined with sweetners gradually replaced spruce gum. The one drawback of paraffin wax gum, however, was that it required heat and moisture from the mouth in order to make it suitable for chewing.

Modern day gum products first appeared in 1869. The famous Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, while searching for a substitute for rubber, thought that chicle might work (remember the sap from the sapodilla tree that the Mayans chewed on?). He contacted the American Inventor Thomas Adams, and while Adams couldn't get chicle to work as rubber, he had the brilliant idea to turn it into a gum base. And thus modern day chewing gum was born from information that the Mayans had known for thousand of years - chicle makes great gum!

In more recent years, manufactures figured out how to add a variety of ingredients which are responsible for an assortment of proven health benefits (besides fresh breath). In future blog entries we'll discuss what ingredients you should look for in a chewing gum that makes it most suitable as a breath freshener . As always, your comments and questions are welcome.