The secret life of chewing gum

Britons spend £240m a year on almost one billion packets of the stuff. The litter crisis is burgeoning, and ministers are poised to declare war. Their chosen weapon? Posters of the famous. Charles Arthur reports

When Thomas Adams carried his first consignment of a Mexican resin called chicle to his local sweetstore in 1845, he could never have imagined the public nuisance he was unleashing. He just thought he had a better brand of chewing gum.

Mr Adams, an inventor based in New York, didn't mean to invent the first long-lasting gum that some consider to be such a menace.

He had been trying to make a material for car tyres by mixing the rubbery juice called chicle from the Manilkara zapodilla tree with various rubbers. (Mr Adams was shown chicle by the Mexican general who had defeated the Americans at the Alamo; he, in turn, was defeated and exiled to New York. Like most of his countrymen, he chewed chicle, a habit that went back to the Aztecs and Mayans.)

Just as Mr Adams was about to throw his failed rubber-and-chicle blends into the city's East river, he heard a girl in a sweetshop asking for chewing gum. At that time, gums were made from spruce resin or paraffin wax - a pretty unpleasant taste, as the store owner confided to Mr Adams. He went away and overnight produced a test sample of 200 little balls of unsweetened chicle, and offered them to the sweetshop owner the next day on a trial basis. Adams thought they would take three months to sell. Instead, even at twice the price of the paraffin wax version, they sold out by midday.

A few years later, chewing gum made another leap forward, when Edward Beeman, a doctor in Ohio, tried adding pepsin - a digestive enzyme used by the body, and popular at the time as a digestive aid - to chicle, because, as his accountant noted, "Most people buy pepsin for digestion and chew gum for no reason at all."

Thus began a gum boom. Chewing gum (and its sibling, bubble gum - less sticky, more stretchy, and first introduced in 1906) became a habit of life. Flavours were added. New gum "bases" were added, replacing chicle with combinations of natural and synthetic gums that could last longer or would hold flavours better. The Japanese have devised blueberry, blackberry and strawberry flavours. However, you'll never taste real chocolate-flavoured gum: the cocoa butters make the gum too soft, making it all taste, no chew.

Today, rather like that other American cultural conquistador, the sugar-flavoured colas, chewing gum has become an icon of Americanism and exported all over the world. In the UK, about 20 million of us consume more than 935 million packs annually, spending more than £240m.

Yet it is by no means an American invention. Humanity's taste for chewing gum goes back to prehistoric times: archaeologists have discovered chunks of tree resin and tar-like deposits bearing tooth marks and other signs of chewing in mesolithic remains. The earliest gums came from simply cutting trees and letting the sap ooze out; some had just the right characteristics to chew on indefinitely. The ancient Greeks chewed resin from the mastic tree of Turkey and Greece (hence "mastication" - a word rooted in Greek). It was also used as a simple glue; Otze, the "ice man" discovered frozen in a glacier in 1991, had birch bark tar holding his axe together.

And that is a clue to the place that chewing gum holds in our psyche. In the 1930s, one of the first scientific studies relating to our liking for chewing things - anything - suggested that it helps to release muscle tension. Chewing gum was issued to American soldiers, and still is, to help them stay alert. (A 2002 study found chewing gum helped people to recall random words.)

Indeed, the gum-chewing American has become a stereotype; the tourist, the soldier, the threatening mobster, but above all someone from over there. In post-war Britain, teenagers aspiring to be cool wanted to emulate their American film icons; and as often as not that meant chewing gum and looking indifferent. That was especially true when it was thought gum was awful stuff that would twine itself around your insides if you swallowed it, and rot your teeth. The more parents told their children this, the more the children loved it.

But all that may be changing now that chewing gum comes with a scientific seal of approval. A study in 1979 found chewing sugar-free gum regularly helps to reduce tooth decay. The reason: it stimulates the production of saliva, which helps to wash away the bacteria that would otherwise settle on our teeth and, helped by sugars, produce acid that rots them. (Another study in 2000 found that if you chew for long enough, then even sugared gum will have the same effect.) Not only that; it's perfectly safe to swallow chewing gum: it will pass through your digestive system virtually untouched. (As long as you don't choke on it, of course; that risk hasn't changed.) It could make a significant difference, given that child tooth decay costs more than £45m in the UK annually, with the average 15-year-old having 2.5 teeth either filled or removed because of decay. Dentists today positively recommend sugar-free gum.

Yet alongside that rise in utility while in our mouths, gum has attracted ever-greater ire from the public (especially from those who don't use it) and the Government as soon as it leaves them. Because, just as horse manure threatened to block the streets in the early 20th century as more and more people took to horses, so abandoned gum has become ubiquitous in our streets. Just look down at the pavement next time you're out for the telltale round greyish blotches strewn over the path. Horse manure was annoying, but at least there was a good reason for it. Chewing gum infuriates because such public disposal is so unnecessary.

The city state of Singapore has taken arguably the most extreme position on chewing-gum littering. Its import, manufacture and sale were banned in 1992, and the penalty for smuggling it is a year in jail and a SG$10,000 fine (about £3,000). (You are however allowed to possess it, and consume it. Just not to make a mess with it.)

After pressure - from the US, naturally, whose gum makers want to expand their markets - it has agreed to lift those bans. You will be able to get chewing gum "with a therapeutic value" as long as you have a medical prescription. But the ban wasn't just a government version of a parent telling a child to "stop chewing that stuff"; they also wanted to get the trains to run on time. Wads of discarded gum stuck to subway doors had prevented them closing, disrupting the service. It was also a nuisance on cinema seats and in public areas like housing estates.

The British government is ready to follow suit, Today the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will explain that gum is one of the main elements in public litter: 94 per cent of 100,000 sites in more than 50 local authority areas had discarded gum trodden into the pavement.

The borough of Westminster has an average of 20 pieces for every square metre of pavement; and local authorities spend more than £150m annually on the problem (either using steam guns to blast it off, or freeze treatments that make the gum fragile; both can damage the pavement).

One option being considered by Alun Michael, the Rural Affairs minister, comes from Ian Kenyon. He was inspired by riding on London Tube escalators, where, for years, travellers have delighted in embellishing the adverts beside them with their unwanted gum - often on the noses of faces there. In 2002 Bournemouth Borough Council began an experiment with a company called Meteora, founded by Mr Kenyon, who thought the Tube example might work in streets. So he set up "GumTargets" - boards with specially sticky surfaces - with faces such as George Bush, Jeffrey Archer, Jeremy Beadle, Tony Blair and Iain Duncan-Smith. Passers-by were encouraged to stick their gum on the boards, not the street. Bournemouth thinks it has been a success, though it is not offering firm numbers on savings. In truth, it's hard to see why people who won't stoop to a bin would seek out a board with a face, when the pavement is always convenient. Perhaps the only answer would be fines.

The other two options are for the scientists in the gum factories: biodegradable gum, and less sticky stuff. Neither seems likely in the short term. Gum that breaks down doesn't seem smart; and gum that doesn't stick isn't high on the manufacturers' list of desirables. It seems we're stuck with Thomas Adams's bright idea.

Words to chew on

"If you can't think because you can't chew, try a banana." Singapore's first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew.

"Now see, this is what the holidays are all about. Three buddies sitting around, chewing gum." Kramer, in the sitcom 'Seinfeld'

"So dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time." Lyndon Johnson, the former US President, of Gerald Ford

"It's OK if you can do it without attracting attention to yourself." Etiquette expert Lesley Carlin, co-author of 'Things You Need to Be Told: A Handbook for Polite Behaviour in a Tacky, Rude World!' on chewing gum

"I saw it everywhere and thought it was gross and tacky." 'New York Post' editor Maureen Callahan, disgusted at the number of stars that chew gum

"It's a serious filth that threatens the environment. We have 3,000 litter bins in Westminster, but people choose to drop their gum on the pavement instead of putting it in the wrapper." A Westminster City Council spokesman

"He can make chewing gum that never loses its taste, and sugar balloons that you can blow up to enormous sizes before you pop them with a pin and gobble them up." Grandpa Joe in 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'

"TV - chewing gum for the eyes." Frank Lloyd Wright, architect

"Oh my little one, take that chewing gum out of your ears." from Elvis Costello's song 'Chewing Gum'

"She can't even chew chewing gum and walk in a straight line at the same time, let alone write a book." Liam Gallagher on Victoria Beckham's autobiography

I always chew gum, it keeps me calm." Burt Reynolds