"gum" news and stories

Medical benefits from gum? You better believe it! Studies show that gum chewing is can help fight the development of cavities by stimulating the production of acid-neutralizing saliva. Xylitol, a common gum ingredient, has been shown to have more specific cavity-fighting properties, as well. It can also, as noted above, help to fight bad breath.

Gums available in Europe and Asia have ingredients like green tea extract, calcium and other nutritional supplements that would typically be found in a vitamin pill. Some children's gums already contain Vitamin-C, for instance. In addition to replacing vitamin pills and supplements, some doctors are considering gum as an alternative to pill-forms of prescription medicines because they would make medicine so easy to "take." Of course, the overall effectiveness of such a plan has not yet been thoroughly tested, although it is known that many substances are very easily absorbed through the gums, but because gum "can contain as many as 70 ingredients" it is certainly possible for thousands of different formulations to be put together.

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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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Along with the check, after dinner one night last week, the waiter brought over a few stick of gum to our table. It wasn't a subtle hint that our breath needed freshening, but the restaurants way of presenting diners with an "after dinner mint" of sorts. The gum, as it turned out, was melon flavored and, though it was excellent, made me wonder what ever happened to real after dinner mints.

For years and years, it seemed as though every single restaurant either had a small basket of mints at the host/hostess stand near the front door or delivered a few mints to the table with the bill. Mints gradually faded from popularity until they were only found at a handful or family-friendly restaurants, left in the face of declining popularity to appease children. Now, those restaurants seem to only grudgingly offer toothpicks. While the mints weren't necessarily candies of the highest order, I still enjoyed them, whether peppermint, cinnamon or, on occasion, chocolate. Can we get them back, please? Melon gum is lovely, but it just doesn't provide the same satisfying conclusion to a meal.

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