Over the last few weeks we have had some very serious and meaningful 3 – minute talks.
Do not expect the same tonight. In contrast, this will seem frivolous.
A couple of weeks ago I was in a discussion where the term “having to walk and chew gum at the same time’
came up. We generally know what this is used as a derogatory term intended to suggest “unable to focus on
more than one thing at a time”. it is a phrase spruiked quite a bit in US politics. The phrase seems to have
originated in US in 1956.
Some research out of Canada shows that struggling to walk and talk, or walk and do mental calculations at the
same time, could indicate a risk for dementia.
Although it's normal to slow down slightly while doing these tasks, the researcher concluded that those who
slow their pace by more than 30 per cent are at a higher risk for later dementia.
As serious as it is, it is not the mental aspect I want to talk about. I want to talk about the “gum”.
Today we tend to associate gum with America and, these days, so we should.
Humans have been chewing gum for thousands of years, with very few side effects. Even so, many of us
believe that if we swallow chewing gum, it will sit, undigested, in the gut for maybe seven years
Archaeologists have found 9000-year-old lumps of black tar, with bite impressions suggesting that most of the
chewers were kids aged 6 to 15. Two thousand years ago, the Greeks chewed the pale yellow resin from the
mastic tree, while American Indians chewed spruce gum.
Chewing gum came to modern America via the Mexican General, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, (who was
responsible for the massacre at the Alamo, in San Antonio, in Texas). Santa Anna later entered the USA, and
settled in Staten Island, New York. He brought with him a big lump of chicle, the dried milky sap or latex of
the Mexican sapodilla tree, which Mexicans had chewed for thousands of years.
The first commercial chewing gum was made and sold in 1848 by John Bacon Curtis. He called his chewing
gum the State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum. He came up with the practical idea of making and selling spruce gum
as chewing gum. They experimented with spruce tree resin and made a sticky, rubbery material that could be
chewed. Then they added flavour to the gum and paraffin for a soft and rubbery feel. The name of John's
factory was Curtis Chewing Gum Factory.
A local New York inventor, Thomas Adams, tried unsuccessfully to turn it into a cheap rubber - but then he
remembered how his son and Santa Anna loved to chew chicle. In February 1871, small tasteless balls of chicle
were first sold in New Jersey as Adams New York Gum - Snapping and Stretching
In the 1870s, Adams & Sons sold Sour Orange flavoured gum as an after-dinner candy. In 1871 Thomas
Adams patented a machine for the manufacture of gum. That year Adams created a licoricey-flavoured gum
called Black Jack. However, all these gums had one big problem. They could not hold flavour.
The problem with holding flavour was not fixed until 1880 when William White combined sugar and corn syrup
with chicle. For better taste, he added peppermint extract. William found that peppermint stayed in the gum
during chewing for much longer than other flavours. Also, in 1880, Henry Fleer and Frank Fleer experimented
with chicle from the sapodilla tree. Fleer brothers made cubes of the chicle substance and overlayed the cubes
with sweet material. They called their invention Chiclets.
Frank Fleer was also the inventor of the world's first bubble gum, Blibber-Blubber gum. However, that gum
was too sticky to enjoy and never sold well.
In 1928, an accountant for the Fleer gum company Walter Diemer attempted to make a new rubber product,
but he accidentally found bubble gum that was not sticky. He called it Double Bubble. Double Bubble gum was
based on the original Frank Fleer formula. Neither Diemer or Fleer patented bubble gum, much to their regret.
Today’s HUBBA BUBBA gum is quite similar to the original.
We tend to associate the name Wrigley with chewing gum. William Wrigley started selling soap and baking
powder in 1891 in Philadelphia. He started using gum as a promotional giveaway to help sales but found it
more lucrative to sell gum separately. Today it is part of the juggernaught Mars Inc.
Today the chewing/bubble gum market is estimated to be worth about $60billion.
