"chewing gum" news and stories

In an attempt to scare children into good behavior around Christmas, some parents would often tell their kids that Santa would fill their stockings with coal instead of presents on Christmas morning if they were naughty. And since the kids already knew that Santa knew just about everything, this strategy sometimes worked and the parents got a couple weeks of good behavior in winter. At least, it would work until the kids realized that their parents were putting them on about Santa delivering coal. To get back at your kids for less-than-perfect behavior this holiday season (not that we're implying that they're anything less than angelic!), you could actually give them some coal - Coal Gum. The box has 2.5 ounces of sweet, but black, gum.

In Italy, where the coal-in-stockings legend got started, parents can give their kids Carbone Dolce, or "sweet coal" as a treat on Christmas. It is basically a mixture of chocolate and puffed rice cereal that is melted together and left to harden into lumps of "coal."

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We already know that chewing gum can help keep your breath fresh as the springtime. Chewing gum can also help to "wash" away nasty plaque and bacteria because it causes you to salivate. Now, scientists have developed a chewing gum uses the good bacteria Lactobacillus found in yogurt to kill of the decay-causing bacteria found in your mouth.

According to Dr. Andreas Reindl of BASF, "The effectiveness has been demonstrated and the first oral hygiene products containing probiotic lactobacilli are scheduled to appear in 2007."

Of course, this doesn't mean you should stop brushing your teeth, flossing, and visiting your dentist regularly.

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The Ice Breakers Ice Cubes concept is an interesting one. In the box of gum, the individual pieces look rather like little sugar cubes, slightly sparkly and not wrapped in paper. They are dubbed "ice cubes" not only for their shape, but because they almost instantly produce a cooling sensation in the mouth. As there are other types of gum that do this, I wasn't in any hurry to try these new Cubes, until I saw the "Dragonfruit Freeze" flavor.

Dragonfruit is the name for the fruits of several species of cacti which grow in Mexico, Central and South America and Southeast Asia. The fruit has a leathery rind and flesh with a texture that is somewhat similar to a firm watermelon and tastes like a slightly sweet kiwi fruit. I was hoping for the same subtlety of flavor to come through in the gum. It didn't, but the gum was still okay.

Overall, the cooling sensation is really refreshing, especially in the summer heat. The flavor is fruity and I would have been more likely to guess "tropical" or "fruit punch" than "dragonfruit." There is a definite citrus tone. It is very pleasant, and a nice change from mintier gums, but the initial taste fades very quickly. I'd buy it again, but I wouldn't make a special trip to the store to pick some up.

You might spit your old, chewed, tasteless, hard gum out onto the sidewalk, but artist Jason Kronenwald uses that gum as his medium.

Jason applies chewed gum to a plywood backing to create his Gum Blonde masterpieces - portraits of blondes made with chewed up gum. According to his bio, Jason doesn't chew gum himself, but has a team who chews the gum for him, with his favorite texture coming from Trident. He does not use paint or dyes, relying on the "inherent" color of the gum, and mixing colors by chewing them.

Pretty impressive, I'd say.

How long does the flavor in your gum last? OR, for that matter, what type of gum do you chew? Lately, I've been chewing quite a bit of Orbitz and I'm pretty satisfied with how long the flavor lasts. I also chew Extra and have found that some of their flavors seem to last longer than others (the mints verses the fruits). Gum is one of the most popular "foods" items in the US, but it is probably also the most complained about. According to the vice president of Cadbury Schweppes, 66% of people feel that their gum looses flavor too quickly. So, to try to give customers what they want, Cadbury has developed a new gum, called Stride. The gum is formulated to remain soft and chewy longer, as well as to release its flavor more slowly, thus increasing the amount to time that customers are willing to chew it. An unofficial taste test in the New York Times found that it did last longer than regular gum, averaging about 20 minutes of good chewing time. The new product will hit the shelves later this month, as will a $50 million advertising campaign, so the release - just like the longer, time-release flavor of the gum itself - will probably be hard to miss.

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