That gum you’re chomping on? It might be time to spit it out.

By Beth Terry
Author, My Plastic Free Life

I’m not a big gum chewer. I can keep a stick of gum in my mouth for about five minutes, just enough time to suck all the flavor out of it, before I’m tired of chewing and starting to get that chewing gum headache. So it was no hardship to let go of chewing gum when I gave up products in plastic packaging, of which chewing gum has among the worst examples, including blister packs and individual plastic wrappers.

Therefore, you shouldn’t be surprised to learn:

Almost all chewing gum is made using plastic.

It hides in a secret ingredient called “gum base,“ which may contain petroleum, lanolin, glycerin, polyethylene (your basic plastic bag and bottle material), polyvinyl acetate (a type of thermoplastic used to make common glue), petroleum wax, stearic acid, or latex (an allergen), according to the Vegetarian Resource Group. Consumers have no way of knowing which of these ingredients, if any, are included in a particular gum base because manufacturers are not required to go into any detail. 

Chewing gum was originally made from a tree sap called chicle, a natural rubber, and sometimes various waxes. After World War II, chemists learned to make synthetic rubber (e.g., polyethylene and polyvinyl acetate), which came to replace most natural rubber in chewing gum. The synthetic gum holds its flavor longer, but ask your sanitation department how hard it is to get this stuff off city pavements.

Does anybody make natural chewing gum anymore? 

The U.S.-based Verve, Inc., makers of Glee Gum, claims it still uses natural chicle in its gum base. So I investigated the Glee Gum website, and I found this description of the product’s gum base:

What is ‘gum base?’
Gum base is the indigestible part of the gum that gives it a chewy texture. It is the part of the gum that you discard after chewing. Most gum base is made of entirely synthetic materials. Glee Gum is the only gum made in North America with a gum base that contains chicle (natural rubber of the Manilkara zapota, known as the sapodilla tree) and a mix of natural and synthetic materials. The exact formula is (unfortunately!) confidential. It is safe to chew, but, like all chewing gum, we don’t recommend that you swallow!

I wanted to know: What exactly are the resins in Glee Gum? From the description above, I can’t tell whether the gum base contains plastic and/or petroleum-based wax or not. The site does tout the omission of artificial flavors, sweeteners, colors, and preservatives, which is awesome. But is the gum base completely natural? 

I called the Glee office and spoke with Deborah Schimberg, founder and CEO of Verve, which makes Glee Gum. In fact, Glee’s gum base DOES contain polyvinyl acetate in addition to chicle. Schimberg said all gum manufacturers use synthetics in their gum base. And in fact, there are only a handful of gum base providers and they won’t even provide complete information to the chewing gum manufacturers about ingredients.

I did find one U.S. company—Simply Gum—offering a completely natural, GMO-free chewing gum made with organic ingredients and without any plastic gum base or plastic packaging. Simply Gum is made from only six ingredients: organic raw cane sugar, all natural chicle, cinnamon, organic vegetable glycerin, organic sunflower lecithin, and organic rice flour. The gum comes in a cardboard box, which includes some thin sheets of paper for wrapping and disposing of the gum responsibly when you’re finished chewing it.

Until manufacturers are required to list all of the ingredients in their products, rather than using non-specific terms like “gum base,” “natural flavors,” or “fragrance,” or similarly, until they are required to list the ingredients in their plastic packaging, we can’t know for sure what we’re putting into our bodies and whether or not it’s truly safe.

Beth Terry writes regularly for Plastic Pollution Coalition about living plastic-free.

Photo credit: mahalie / Foter / CC BY-SA

That gum you’re chomping on? It might be time to spit it out.

By Beth Terry
Author, My Plastic Free Life

I’m not a big gum chewer. I can keep a stick of gum in my mouth for about five minutes, just enough time to suck all the flavor out of it, before I’m tired of chewing and starting to get that chewing gum headache. So it was no hardship to let go of chewing gum when I gave up products in plastic packaging, of which chewing gum has among the worst examples, including blister packs and individual plastic wrappers.

Therefore, you shouldn’t be surprised to learn:

Almost all chewing gum is made using plastic.

It hides in a secret ingredient called “gum base,“ which may contain petroleum, lanolin, glycerin, polyethylene (your basic plastic bag and bottle material), polyvinyl acetate (a type of thermoplastic used to make common glue), petroleum wax, stearic acid, or latex (an allergen), according to the Vegetarian Resource Group. Consumers have no way of knowing which of these ingredients, if any, are included in a particular gum base because manufacturers are not required to go into any detail. 

Chewing gum was originally made from a tree sap called chicle, a natural rubber, and sometimes various waxes. After World War II, chemists learned to make synthetic rubber (e.g., polyethylene and polyvinyl acetate), which came to replace most natural rubber in chewing gum. The synthetic gum holds its flavor longer, but ask your sanitation department how hard it is to get this stuff off city pavements.

Does anybody make natural chewing gum anymore? 

The U.S.-based Verve, Inc., makers of Glee Gum, claims it still uses natural chicle in its gum base. So I investigated the Glee Gum website, and I found this description of the product’s gum base:

What is ‘gum base?’
Gum base is the indigestible part of the gum that gives it a chewy texture. It is the part of the gum that you discard after chewing. Most gum base is made of entirely synthetic materials. Glee Gum is the only gum made in North America with a gum base that contains chicle (natural rubber of the Manilkara zapota, known as the sapodilla tree) and a mix of natural and synthetic materials. The exact formula is (unfortunately!) confidential. It is safe to chew, but, like all chewing gum, we don’t recommend that you swallow!

I wanted to know: What exactly are the resins in Glee Gum? From the description above, I can’t tell whether the gum base contains plastic and/or petroleum-based wax or not. The site does tout the omission of artificial flavors, sweeteners, colors, and preservatives, which is awesome. But is the gum base completely natural? 

I called the Glee office and spoke with Deborah Schimberg, founder and CEO of Verve, which makes Glee Gum. In fact, Glee’s gum base DOES contain polyvinyl acetate in addition to chicle. Schimberg said all gum manufacturers use synthetics in their gum base. And in fact, there are only a handful of gum base providers and they won’t even provide complete information to the chewing gum manufacturers about ingredients.

I did find one U.S. company—Simply Gum—offering a completely natural, GMO-free chewing gum made with organic ingredients and without any plastic gum base or plastic packaging. Simply Gum is made from only six ingredients: organic raw cane sugar, all natural chicle, cinnamon, organic vegetable glycerin, organic sunflower lecithin, and organic rice flour. The gum comes in a cardboard box, which includes some thin sheets of paper for wrapping and disposing of the gum responsibly when you’re finished chewing it.

Until manufacturers are required to list all of the ingredients in their products, rather than using non-specific terms like “gum base,” “natural flavors,” or “fragrance,” or similarly, until they are required to list the ingredients in their plastic packaging, we can’t know for sure what we’re putting into our bodies and whether or not it’s truly safe.

Beth Terry writes regularly for Plastic Pollution Coalition about living plastic-free.