Invention Classic: Chewing Gum

Those are some of the questions we're gonna explore in this classic episode of Invention, which originally published July nineteen. Let's dive right in. Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Robert, I've got a question for you about childhood. Did your elementary school have

draconian anti gum policies? Um, There was definitely and there were definitely anti gum policies, and I and I agree with him, And I mean, at the time, I don't think I was a big gum cheer at the time, so they didn't really impact me all that much. But but but ultimately, like I don't like stepping in gum. I don't like encountering gum stuck to the bottom of deaths or inside deaths. So I never really had a

problem with it. I think maybe my confused. I mean, I wasn't a huge gum cheer as a child, but I do remember thinking about the gum rule. This just doesn't make sense, it's not fair. It was one of my first real, uh you know, thought processes of rebelling against authority and the rules imposed by the man. Because other rules were like, you know, don't hit people, don't steal from people, like they all caused harm to someone, and I was thinking, what harm does it do when

someone choose gum? Now I understand the adult perspective. It's I think primarily because it's like gross, and because the gum ends up somewhere. It shouldn't right. The gum ends up somewhere, it should be Uh. There's also just especially if it's bubble gum. I don't know. I still I'm kind of anti bubble gum, Like there's not okay. It can be fun to blow a bubble, I guess, but

it's just kind of weird. I don't know, And I've I've taught before, and I don't specifically remember encountering gum chewers. Maybe I did, but I think if if I didn't find it annoying, I feel like I would find it annoying,

you know what I'm saying. It's like just looking out there and there there's somebody chewing, and then it's probably if if you've ever experienced any level of miss aphonia, like gum chewing can definitely set off miss aphonia, especially if it's like gum smacking, you know where it's like open mouth chewing of the gum. I am less annoyed by memories of students chewing gum, which I don't really have.

I do remember students in my classes eating just eating lunch and stuff, which I never knew if I should make a big deal about that or not. It's just one of those things that in retrospect I probably should have forbidden but didn't. On the other hand, I do. I chew a lot of gum today, Like if I'm in the car, I will probably even if I don't really need it, I'll generally grab a piece of sugar free gum and and chew it a bit. And it's uh.

Sometimes it's not even like a breath freshening exercise. Uh. Like this morning, I put one in my mouth on the way into work, and I had looked just brush my teeth, so there was no like real like freshness issue at hand. It was just I just wanted the sensation of chewing the gum. It's a good way of

getting the goat blood off of your teeth. Now that being said, it is I think it's super handy to be able to turn the gum if you know you need a little something to freshen your breath up after you've just set a meal out and you don't have access to toothpaste and toothbrush. Um, it can be It can also be be great while working. It's you know, while you're studying, writing, etcetera. And then I've also I've heard of other people like growing to depend on it

in certain tasks. Like here's one I've never quite understood, but I have heard that some professional wrestlers not only chew gum while wrestling, but depend on it. Like if they are not chewing the gum, it like throws off their their their rhythm or something choking hazard. Right, well, one would think, right, I mean I as a as a father, like I definitely if my son were running around chewing gum, I would probably decide said to give him the whole, like you're going to choke on that

if you if you run. But uh yeah, there's this whole thing with with professional refers professional athletes. I mean, it's obviously big League Chew's named for uh, you know, for big for Major League Baseball players, who I guess we're you know, generally chewing tobacco in the old days, but but still chew gum. You'll still see professional athletes chewing gum during their events. I think one thing that's funny but big League chew is that it's the most

unnecessarily macho of candies. And yet if you look back in history, there is often a very gendered component to people's judgment of gum chewing behaviors in which gum chewing is uh is, in many points and societies and history associated with women and especially young women, and looked on judgmentally. Uh So, I've got a little ditty from the British Medical Journal in you want to hear some gum hate? Yeah,

let's hear it. Okay. The question has been raised whether there is any reason for supposing that the practice of gum chewing so prevalent in the United States, is on the increase in this country. We have made some inquiries and have ascertained that many young women, students, actresses, and others appear to have acquired this disgusting habit and are

inveterate chewers. We have examined specimens of chewing gum obtained from various fashionable sweet shops in London and find that, as a rule, it consists of rubber flavored with aniseed or peppermint or some o their aromatic substance. Now, I catch more than a hint of misogyny and all of that, especially singling out um students and actress actual system. It's like like women in society, independent, young women that are that have some level of independence are the ones that

are being singled out as being disgusting gum chewers. And the gum itself, like you're talking about like peppermint flavored, Uh, you know, rubber. I mean, what's that? It sounds pleasant? Doesn't sound that disgusting with this disgusting habit. I've got a response to this article from the British Medical Journal. This response is in the North American Practitioner the next

year eight just a couple of selections from it. Our English contemporaries are taking our people to task as well they may, for the vile, as they term it, the American habit of gum chewing. We submit no defense to the charge and are only consoled by the fact that the habit is less disgusting than that of tobacco chewing. Our confreres have our profound sympathy in their efforts to promote reform. At the same time, we prefer to see jaw jumpers consigned to the minor bad rather than the

bad irremediable. We regret that this fat is classed as an American industry. Nevertheless, the fact is too patent for denial,

and there is no accounting for taste jaw jumpers. Never heard that before, But I think I get what they're saying, because did you know the kid when you were in elementary school who didn't just chew gum but did the like exaggerated a huge up and down movement of the jaw that I guess I vaguely remember you know saying, But I was sometimes I would think that that's part of just having too much gum in your mouth or deciding to refresh in a you know, like a completely

drained piece of gum with a second piece of gum, which you know might have seen like a good idea when you're a kid. One more follow up to the b m J article. I was reading about this in a book by Carrie Cgrave called Chewing Gum in America

eighteen fifty nineteen twenty uh. This books from so it notes that this original British Medical Journal article was reprinted in the Daily Mail shortly after appearing in the b MJ, and the printing actually prompted an editorial response that included an interview with this guy named Hubert Beaumont, who was managing director of a retail shop called Fuller's which sold

chewing gum, and Beaumont was defensive. He insisted that the British Medical Journal was wrong that chewing gum was not made out of rubber, but out of sap that came from a tree that grow in Mexico. Quote it is a purely vegetable substance and perfectly harmless. And he also defended gum chewing from the charge that it was disgusting, basically saying, hey, people have been chewing stuff for a

long time exactly. So that's what we're gonna look at for the rest of today's episode, the history and invention of various forms of chewing gum. Look at the history of this disgusting habit, the invention of several different versions of gum across the years, and what are gums says about us. I do want to say that another time when I usually have to chew gum or I really prefer to chew gum, is if I am you know, flying or driving up into the mountains and the sort

of thing where you're gonna anxiety. Well, I mean we're encountering pressure changes and uh, you know it's it's great to can help relieve leave pressure in the in the ears. You know, I'm doing large part because chewing it and certainly feel your face the next time you're chewing. I mean, it is a uh, it involves so many different muscles of the head and face like it's a it's it's a it's a major muscular activity. That's a really good point about the pressure change. I did not go there.

I thought you were going to go to anxiety I know you're you can get a little anxious on an airplane. Oh no, well, there are other things. I prefer to gum for that. But but I don't know that. There are those who speak maybe we'll get into this a little later that speak to the anxiety. Um. Uh, the use of gum to at least mildly treat anxiety. Well, I mean, I think about the behaviors of some animals where symptoms of anxiety or anxiety like conditions in some

animals can manifest as chewing behaviors. Oh yeah, well, let's let's talk about about chewing itself, because alto only, that's the main activity at play here. So chewing is good, chewing is necessary, It's okay, No, it's it's great. It's grateful for the members of the animal kingdom that engage in chewing, which of course includes us. It allows us

to take the first steps toward digestion. So you're breaking your food down into smaller pieces and also increasing the overall surface area of the food, and this will speed up the effectiveness of digestion. And then chewing also releases flavors, you know, often very pleasurable flavors. And uh, and this is all part of the sensory perception of the material that we're testing out and potentially eating. And that's easy to forget, like why do we taste things. We taste

things to figure out to know what they are. You know, this mix of taste and smell that's happening inside your skull as you mash the lea for the stem or maybe a bug or a piece of flesh. As you be chew it up, as you masticate it um, You're you're sensing it. You're getting a sense of what this is and and ultimately this is supposed to play into the decision whether or not to form it into a bolus with your your tongue in the back of your throat and send it down to the next step. Very

appetizing to think about while you're actually eating. Yes, I hope everybody's eating while they or maybe you're at least

chewing gup. But there's also, in addition to just the pure mashing with the teeth, there's a little bit of sort of chemical treatment of the food as you're you're chewing it up to right, Yeah, the act of chewing produces saliva, which plays a key role in this first phase of digestion and again the ultimate preparation of the bolus that will pass onto the realms below and so final.

For these reasons, chewing is especially important to herbivores and omnivores. Right, so if you want to like mash up tough fibrous plant material with your teeth so you can get more nutrients out of it. You notice there are some animals that don't chew at all, and they tend to be carnivores. Yeah, and I think I think about like snakes. So I don't know if there may be some cases of snakes doing something like chewing, but generally you know they're going

to be swallowing their prey mostly hall right. Yeah. Another big example of course the sperm whale, you know which one, just inhale. A lot of fish also fish also do this as well, an inhalation of the entire organism. The ending of anaconda wouldn't be quite the same if John Voyd had been chewed up before being swallowed exactly. There is cinematic payoff to that, for sure. Now, there have been those who put you know, excessive emphasis on chewing.

For instance, I have to mention the work of Horace Fletcher. Who's he Oh he lived eighteen forty nine through nineteen nineteen, and he was known as the Great Masticator for and he was known as by this moniker because of his teachings of a fletcherizing. So basically his idea was that not only did you need to chew your food, because we've all heard that, right, and you know we've we've

heard somebody say that to a child. Makes yeah, chew too, your food to your food, don't just you know, swallowed. But he was he would he would have argued that you need to chew your food to the point of liquefication in order to properly digest it and just count your choose, etcetera. And uh he he had some nice slogans for this, like this was his big issue, and one of them was nature will castigate those who don't mastigate. Um. Wait, so this is this is the first smoothie king, Well

before you had blenders. This guy is doing an organic smoothie revolution. Yeah, he would have loved a vitam x you know. But but he was also you know, arguing that that chewing, you know, it's releasing the saliva and you need a certain amount of saliva to be produced. So he was all all part of it had to do with this with the idea of like all the things that chewing is actually doing and some of these things,

you know, saliva is important. Is it's so important that you need to chew your drinks like that, because that was something you are like, if you're you're you're having a you're drinking something, you need to chew your drink as well, just to make sure the saliva is being produced. But a lot of a lot of people were, you know, we're sucked in by this this line of thinking, including

Dr John Harvey Kellogg. That's not a surprise. Yeah, he was an adherent, though Kellogg eventually abandoned fletcherizing because he realized that that wh he decided that fiber was more important and that fletcherizing might get in the way of taking in that necessary fiber. Well stopped clock rule. I mean, John Harvey Kellogg was mostly a crank. But fiber is very important, important to have a lot in your diet. But also wasn't John Harvey Kellogg an advocate of like

boring foods. Didn't he suggest like you need to eat foods that aren't going to like excite the libido and stuff. He had a lot of ideas, some of which, uh no, some of them were definitely um, you know, quackery like fletcherizing. Um. Yeah, he also got into abstinence being an essential part of his his his his plan for a better life. But then you know, also we got cereal, some cereals out of the mix. Yeah. So so yeah, chewing is important,

but not fletcherizing level of important. As we said already, mastication entails a whole host of facial merchant muscles, so a certain amount of energy goes into the act. And if you just look around at our fellow humans, yes, you'll see a lot of gum chewing, but you'll also probably notice a lot of other things whin wind up being chewed by humans. Things like tobacco for sure, but also various herbal chooes, pencils, pins, toothpicks. Oh, don't chew toothpicks, folks.

I'm not saying do it. I'm just saying, you see it happened. No, I know we're not recommending any of these, but especially don't chew toothpicks. Um. You'll see people chewing uh pacifiers. Sometimes adults will two pass fires that light up. Uh. And then also night you never heard that, Well, you see some people like it's like a raver. I don't know if it's still done, but I used to one

would see it. And then uh, then I myself, I use a night guard at night, and sometimes I think of that as chewing, Like basically I'm putting a chew toy in my mouth and chewing it all night. But I do have to drive home that this is actually bruxi is um, which is excessive teeth grinding or jaw clenching,

and it's unrelated to eating. Likewise, there are various chewing disorders and animals as well that shouldn't necessarily be confused for examples of normal eating or anything resembling recreational chewing. And I was wondering about this though, so so, yeah, if if we see humans chewing things in many cases seemingly purely for the act of chewing, Like you're chewing on the end of that pin, why you're not gaining any nutreents from that pin? You just much you want

something to chew. Uh, And I wonder, sorry, I just don't know. I thought about ice chewing, ice chewing, ice chewing freaks me out. I know millions of you out there probably do it, but it's just please don't do

it around me. It gives me the creepy Well, there's there's But my point is there's a lot of stuff we chew and why, And so I was wondering about this, and I wonder if, to a certain extent this is because this is like stemming back to a time in our prehistory in which we were always gathering edible materials.

You know, we were hunter gatherers, and as we gathered, perhaps we were eating a little bit as we went, we were tasting, chewing things to see what they were, or you know, certainly if we recognize what they were and knew that they had, say like a mild stimulant to them, perhaps we need to do to chew on that to keep going. But we probably also a lot of high fiber potential foods. Yeah, yeah, you kind of like, you know, you would need to be chewing all the time, right.

I was also I recently learned on a mushroom and herb foraging tour via a licensed turbalist that an experience forger can chew, taste, and spit a variety of substances, so not necessarily chewing, uh, you know, not chewing to eat, but chewing to sort of taste and help identify a particular substance, even a mushroom um, because if you're if something a lot, if you if you chew it and spit it, you know, you can get a sense of it.

Is it a bitter or is putrid? Whatever the taste happens to be, and that would aid and experienced individual in identifying that substance. Well, so I've got a question. Do bears chew gum? I mean, what are there are there examples of gum style recreational chewing in the animal world outside of humans? Well? Um, I looked around for examples of recreational chewing in animals and there wasn't a

lot to report. Most of it seems to be in the aid of food selection and consumption, or to do to some manner of malady or the effects of being kept in an enclosure. I thought to my own cat, and occasionally, you know, my cattle do this thing where she takes the food in her mouth, chew it, let's it drop out, and then maybe she'll eat it. But I think that's ultimately part of her tasting the substance

and then deciding whether to eat it. Now, I do think that there there seemed to be some behaviors in dogs and perhaps other carnivores that seem to me to be non feeding for chians, of chewing where they'll chew

on a you know, bone or a stick or something. Yeah, um, And I wonder if that has to do with like dental health or something about the teeth what you do there is there's an element of dental health and some animals, probably the best example being that of you know, to a certain extent, uh, you know, birds and dogs chewing on different items obviously, like a for a like a cat.

And you often see feathers brought up as an example of something they would kind of chew on roughly, you know, as it was a way of helping to keep their teeth clean. Dogs are going to chew on bones obviously, But then hamsters, for example, it's an animal that needs to chew in order to keep its ever growing teeth healthy. It's like sharpening your knives. Yeah, yeah, I guess if your knives kept growing, if your knives kept growing out

of your skull exactly. But dogs, though you you encourage me to look into this little bit more because I'm not a dog owner, but you're a dog owner. Does

your dog like to chew on things in the house. Yes, he's not as big a chewer as some dogs are, And I would make a strong distinction, I guess, between things that are in some way kind of a food or food analogy, like something that is flavored or something, uh, you know, raw hide or something like that, versus just chewing on like chew toys, which which Charlie didn't do very much, but some dogs do a lot of. Yeah.

I was reading a little bit a bit about this, so on one have a level like food chew toys that are made out of some sort of edible material, Like they'll break those down. Like I was surprised that that's basically eating. Yeah, I was surprised as a non dog owner. Like one day I brought this like edible chew toy over to a friend's house and I was like, Oh, this will be great this The dog will love this

for weeks and weeks. And the dog proceeded to just just break it into pieces and eat the whole thing, and I was I was impressed. A big nasty bloody wet muzzle when it's done. But but there's this whole issue of course dogs chewing things they're not supposed to chew is actually shoes and I found, um, I found an article in Live Science so where they were talking to Calling Tennant, a chairman of the UK Canine and

Feline Behavior Association, and uh. They pointed out that okay, so yes, dogs chew things, uh, but a lot of times they're chewing things in order to sense them. And it comes down to not only the not really the taste necessary, but the smell potential of a dog. They said that when a when a dog choose on something, it's like a quote, a human opening a door and

looking into a room. So we have to remember that all these other animals they're living in their own different sensory worlds with different levels of sensory input, and a dog lives in a you know, a high level olfactory universe. And so chewing on something and releasing the smells of that thing and the tastes of that thing, um like, they're interacting with it in a way that we can scarcely really imagine. And Tennant says, you know, a lot of the chewing such as the chewing of shoes is

also done out of anxiety. So ultimately a dog is a pack animal, and it needs the pack for security. And you humans that you know that live with the dog, well you are its pack. And so they might chew on a shoe in order to engage with the smell of their humans, which is comforting. But then the extra level of complication there is that a lot of times our shoes are made out of leather, which leans into their natural inclination to chew on meat, bones, etcetera. But

but I think that's interesting. I really never really had thought about that before, Like in the same way that if we're away from our loved ones, we might pull up a picture and stare longingly at them, or listen to them on the phone, listen to our recording brafts, because we're we're an audio visual leaning species. But what does an olfactory species do? Uh? You know, they may chew They're going to chew on a remnant and uh

and and engage with the smell. Uh you know, it's we can It's difficult to imagine how how humans would operate if smell was our prime was one of our more forward sensory perceptions something I think about a lot. I mean, when you walk a dog, it's kind of it's it's hard not to notice that the dog is

just by sniffing the world opening many sort of cases. Uh, it's like, you know, you're detective and you're out like opening a case constantly by investigating something that I don't know if those cases ever get closed or how much information is being provided, but clearly there's just all kinds of streams of smell based information that the dog is benefiting from just on you know, walk down the sidewalk

that you're not picking up on at all. On the other hand, maybe you can enjoy spearmint gum in a way that a dog can't. So maybe we should take a break. Yeah, let's take a break, and when we come back, we will discuss some of the earliest known examples of something like chewing gum. Alright, we're back. So the short answer is that, yes, even in ages past deprived of big league chew and similar items um, you

still have people who are chewing gum. But they were chewing natural gums and latexts and sometimes harder materials as well, and they did it for reasons that I you know, I think we can in many cases say we're recreational, though it's is is kind of the case in our recent stuff to Blow Your Mind episodes on Tilt with psychedelics and certain drugs. The term recreational is difficult in contemplating like why humans consume things or engage in things.

It can be used to say like, this is something that you're doing purely, you know, for no good reason. Whereas when you really analyze things that we classify as recreation, be it something we drink, something we eat, or something we do like a social engagement, there's often more to it. It's often more important than that. A recreational is often used to mean trivial and doesn't necessarily mean that right as a as the psychedelic enthusiast Bob Jesse I think

would say what's wrong with recreating myself exactly? But then on top of that, we're going to see some examples of chewing gum and gum like materials for hygienic reasons, um, even even health reasons, medics, medicinal reasons. Yeah, and we see this across many different cultures. Yes, So uh, I want to talk for a bit about Otsy, the so

called ice man you know, of course, is great. I would see a wonderful individual to study, uh because you know, he he preserves some of the activities that that ancient humans engaged in that we still engage in today, such as uh tattoos for instance. Oh yeah, I mean there's so Otsi if you're not familiar, is a Stone Age mummy from the late fourth century not fourth century, sorry, the late fourth millennium BC E, discovered in the early nineteen nineties frozen with his head part of his body

sticking out of a glacier in the Italian Alps. Like way up in the Italian Alps, and Ossie is a

fascinating subject in so many ways, as you allude to. Um. We could return to him in a number of ways in either one of our podcasts, but included among the many fascinating questions about him are what was he doing so high up in the mountains, especially since cat scans of the mummy revealed that he's got an arrowhead lodged in his shoulder, and he had other injuries that occurred right before death, showing that he almost certainly died by homicide,

and so like well, you know, this like what six thousand year old murder mystery or five thousand year old murder mystery. That that's pretty cool. But one of the other things about Otzi that's really interesting is his tool kits. So of course he is a stone age guy up in the mountains and he's got stone age tools with

him and they're very well preserved. So this includes an axe that he carried with them that had an awesome copper blade, and the copper blade has been traced back to its origins in southern Tuscany, which of course is hundreds of miles from where Elsie lived. And this copper blade was secured to the half of the acts by a couple of means, so it was wrapped with leather straps, but it was also secured there by a type of stone age glue made of tar that was created from

the bark of the birch tree. And I want to focus on this birch bark tar for a second, because we could probably do an episode of this show on stone age adhesives ancient glues. I mean, isn't glue a fascinating invention in its own right? It comes thousands of years after the byface or knife, but it's sort of like it's the it's the inverse knife. Yeah, how do we put things back together or how do we assemble

things as opposed to and disassembled them. Yeah. So, birch bark tar is this black, sticky plastic substance that's made from the destructive distillation of arc from the birch tree. And practically what this means is that your Stone age human would create this stuff through a delicate proto industrial process by which they would heat birch bark over a temperature controlled fire inside an airtight container or at least

a low oxygen environment. And the tar produced by this process functions is a thermal plastic, meaning it's solid at room temperature, but the more you heat it up, the softer and more pliable it gets, so you can, you know, you heat it up enough, and it can basically become kind of like a viscous liquid that you can apply like a glue. Now, obviously having this tar based adhesive would be useful in the ancient world. Think of all

the stuff you can do with glue. Sure, you can glue shards of broken pottery back together, but in the case of Stone Age action heroes like oatsy. You can use this birch bark tard glue fletching onto aarow shafts, and you can also use it in conjunction with the straps I mentioned half to your copper axe head and hold it in place while you do your whack in on whatever you do your whack into. Another use would

be for waterproofing things. Yes, as a ceiling exactly. So the ancient uses of birch bark tar and tree bark tars in general are are extensive, but one of the most interesting was a use we have surprisingly clear evidence of. So I was reading about it in a paper by Elizabeth M. Aveling and Carl Herron in the journal Antiquity in nineteen called Chewing Tar in the Early Holocene and

Archaeological and Ethnographic Evaluation. So from all throughout sites in Northern Europe, including Scandinavia, southern Germany and Switzerland, archaeologists have recovered lumps of what appears to be ancient tar with human tooth impressions, and they date from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. They attached to the underside of Neolithic desks. You know you wonder about that, right, like uh, if they had had more infrastructure, would be all over the place.

I imagine two. In Neolithic times, it was possible to step on somebody's chewing material, step on somebody's chewing gum, and be like, yeah, well, I mean, I guess that's assuming we know that this was gum, But I'm gonna

make the case it very likely was um. So so yeah, So they date from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, that's the middle of the Late Stone Age, going back about as far as roughly nine thousand years ago, and they're all described as these amorphous masses, black or brown in color, that have indentations left by human teeth. So why we're human teeth biting down on these lumps of ancient tar, We think very likely it was for some form of chewing gum, and the authors suggests this as well. Quote.

Although the primary function of teeth is to bite, chew, crunch, and grind food, chewing plant or animal products serves a number of alternative roles, such as cleaning teeth and gums, freshening breath, quenching thirst a levi aiding dental ailments and sore throats, and as a means of delivering medicinal and

psychoactive agents to the body. Now they talk about maybe there are a couple of counter explanations for why you might find tooth marks on old bits of tar, and these these tooth marks might have reflected some kind of functional or practical use. Instead of showing that the tar was chewing gum, for example, it might have been related to their use as an adhesive. Since birch bark tar is thermoplastic, maybe chewing softened the tar so that you could apply it as an adhesive or ceilant. It's sort

of like the hot glue gun is your mouth. You know, you put the glue stick in, you chew it up, you heat it with your mouth, and you spit it out. But the authors don't seem convinced by this because quote experiments have suggested that a coding of saliva actually reduces the capacity of the tar to adhere. Another possible explanation they mentioned is that quote amorphous aggregates formed a stock of tar to be you reheated from time to time

to facilitate the removal of smaller pieces for use. Once sufficiently softened, it would then be easy to bite a piece off. So right, so like your ammunition of tar to use out in the field as this big piece, and then you could heat it up a little bit and bite a piece off to remove it from from your bandalier of tar basically h So that might be a possibility, but there seems to be pretty good evidence

that this was just chewing gum uh. And there's some evidence that chewing tar and tree resin like this has been passed down through generations in Northern Europe as a treatment for sore throats and dental complaints even into the twentieth century, like the author's site Ethnographic studies of tar and resin chewing behavior conducted by Vilcuna in nineteen sixty four in the Lap area of northern Sweden, and I

want to read a quote here quote. Vilcuna also notes an eighteen seventeen account written by Goldland of a church service in Finland which half of the congregation, all women, were chewing resin to keep themselves awake. So if you've got a really boring minister who's putting everybody to sleep, you chew resin so that you don't fall asleep and

and get in trouble. Gotland noted that people chewed to pass the time, to keep teeth white, to prevent the invasion of scurvy into the gums, and to relieve stomach pains and heartburn. The most enthusiastic chewers were adolescents and old women. The preparation of chews required practice, so older women often pre chewed the resin for children. Cool. Well, you know I have chewed things for my son before. Really, yeah, I mean it's not that uncommon. It makes sense really

like chewed with your mouth. I'm not judging mean, well, like okay, well, like if you need to say, for instance, my son's going through the phase right now where his teeth, uh, he's changing out his teeth, he's losing the baby teeth and grown up teeth are coming in. And they made a couple of times where he hasn't been able to

like bite into an apple. And if the apple's only snack that I have around that I have at times like and I don't if I don't have a knife or something i'man, which I usually don't, I'll bite a piece off of the apple, take it out of my mouth, give it to him. And there's actually like a well that's so sweet. But but even like an earlier ages, like the sort of preaching chewing or mild pre chewing of food, not like a complete baby birding type of situation.

There's the argument that you're passing on vital enzymes to the young child. Uh So, yeah, I think it's not that weird that grandma would be passing off a piece of resin to a child and during church that's cool. So you know, grandma choose it in the first half of church, and then when it's time for the sermon to get going, you pass it off to the kids

maybe so keep them occupied. Okay, picking back up with this quote, though, Although the majority of Vilcuna's ethnographic cases relate to chewing tree resins, reference is also made to the chewing of birch mark tar for similar purposes. In nineteenth century Siberia. The tar had to be prepared in a specific manner and only women could be present. So that's kind of interesting, like this gendered secret ritual about

the preparation of the tar for chewing. Other interesting facts include the fact that the teeth marks and most of the Stone Age tar lumps appear to have been left by young people, children and adolescents roughly ages six to fifteen, and finally, to bring it back to Otsy the author's site speculation by an author named Spindler in nineteen ninety four that quote polished sections on the incisors and canines of the frozen remains of the Neolithic body from the

Austrian Italian Alps may have occurred as a result of chewing birch bark tar. And I think this is referring

to Otsy himself, to the Iceman. But so I think this looks like a really good case that going way back into the Stone Age, people were chewing these lumps of tar made from tree bark resin as maybe for medicinal purposes, maybe just recreationally, maybe for aesthetic or hygiene purposes, but they were definitely chewing them, right, And you can also have multiple, uh, you know, purposes in play, Like maybe it starts off as just a way of you know,

heating up the material, we're having it handy for you know, use in repairing items and whatnot, but then it just becomes something recreational in nature or you know, they pick up on the fact that it, uh you know, makes your teeth appear or feel healthier. Yeah, but we should say tar are produced by tree bark and resin in northern Europe is not the only gum that predates modern industrial chewing gum. There are actually a number of different

gum and resin showing traditions around the world. Right. One of them is a bitumen, which, uh, there's evidence that the Aztecs chewed it. This is a black, viscous mixture of hydrocarbons um that you know is often it can be obtained naturally or is it or is it residue

from petroleum distillation. We've talked about bitumen on the show before its role and it's been used basically for a number of different purposes throughout human history, from you know, very industrial type uses to make up to the preparation of mummies, that sort of thing. I think we talked about how it figured into some hypotheses of the explanation of Greek fire. Yes, I believe it did. Yeah, well, I think that was on stuff to blow your mind.

It was, yes, But but that's a great episode because that's essentially an invention episode. So go listen to that if you want a nice ancient military secret exploration. But anyway, the Aztecs are thought to have obtained the bid amen from natural seepages along the Gulf coast, and females especially were said to have chewed the bitumen to sweeten their breath. There's like a strange like gendered element again to chewing

gum traditions. I wonder too, this makes me because I'm also thinking about other South and meso American practices involving chewing, and I'm instantly reminded of the like the lengthy process of creating chocolate, which is something I would love to just do a whole episode of Invention on chocolate one day.

But chewing is an evolved and I wonder if it, like if this plays into like, uh, you know, the division of of labor between male and female members of society, and like the processing of plants might be something that was done like by perhaps children in some cases and or older people back at the camp, while more able bodied people engaged in like hunting and gathering. Yeah, that's interesting.

Let's keep that in mind because actually I think we're about to talk about another meso American chewing tradition that has at least as been recorded with some social gendered elements. And that substance, of course is chickle, which is totally that's the basis of chicklets, right, I believe, I guess so I did. Yeah, chicklets. Yeah, I remember chickolates more. I remember from from my childhood. But I believe they still make them. I think it's still a thing. But yeah.

The the Aztecs and the Maya were also said to have chewed cured latex or chickle from the tropical sapodilla tree. Yeah. That tree is also known as the men Elkara zapota. I think that's the scientific name. And it's found primarily

in Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula. And you can collect the latex from this tree by hacking these Z shaped cuts in the bark higher up along the trunk, and this allows the latex to trickle down into a receptacle, after which it can be boiled to the appropriate viscosity and then prepared for chewing. Now, historical records indicate there are a number of reasons why the chickle was chewed.

It was to prevent thirst in some cases, to suppress appetite or hunger in other cases, uh sometimes to sweeten breath. It's reported that the Aztecs had many complicated social rules about how it could be chewed and by who and when. Uh.

There there were gender based expectations and taboos. Apparently chewing chickle in public was okay for single women and for children, but married women and widows could only use it in private as a supposed breath freshener or something, and that there was an association with it being seen as a feminine or something, so that men wouldn't be able to use it in public or would be shamed if they did. Wow.

So this is interesting in geographic areas as far as separated in times like the Vastic Empire versus in Stone Age Northern Europe. In Stone Age Northern Europe, it looks to us like the primary chewers of chewing gum. Then we're children, and here it's it seems like it was mainly, uh, something that was only publicly acceptable for children and some women. Now.

Another example of of a chewing substance from history, The Greeks chewed mastic, which is a plant resin obtained from the mastic tree, and it was also known as the tears of chios Um, which is its name for the Greek island of chios from which a lot of it

was apparently harvested. Uh and it was a call that because the way was harvested like that, you would you would have these droplets coming down from the tree and um from the branches, and they would kind of you know, solidify and then when you hack them off, they continue to look like little droplets or tears. But it apparently had a bitter taste. It was followed we followed by kind of a pine wood after taste that people liked.

So it seems to have been used as a as a way of sprucing up your breath, but also was had some medicinal properties. Uh and and uh and was you know, used medicinally and may have had a value to dental health. I believe there they've actually been some studies that have looked into like to what degree it actually it still has, you know, a verified impact on

dental hygiene. Yeah. And now there was some chewing traditions also farther north in the North America among the indigenous people's, some of whom chewed the residin of the spruce trees. The early European colonists to North America picked up on the practice of chewing spruce tree residin as well, and then eventually spruce tree resin was turned into an early

version of commercial chewing gum. I think it was in like the eighteen forties that there was this guy named John Curtis who developed a process for commercially producing spruce tree gum that would involve like boiling down the resin and then cutting it up into strips and coding them in a in a powder that would keep them from

sticking together. And I guess he made some money. Now, obviously we're not gonna have time to discuss everything that humans have chewed and continue to chew on the podcast here, but I do want to just point out that, uh, you know a few examples that come to mind in part because of their uh they're they're stimulating properties. So a crayon nut and beetle leaf chewed together. This goes back to thousands of years in East Asia and the Indian subcontinent and still is in You still see people

doing this today. When chewed, it releases a mild stimulant much like nicotine, but also it has a carcinogen in it that's bad, you know, ultimately bad for your health. Uh. Sometimes additional herbs were also added to it for flavor. Likewise, chewing tobacco. Chewing tobacco leaves dates back to pre Columbian times in North and South America, again chewing it in

order to release a mild stimulant. And then yet another example, the coca leaf, from of course, from which you know, one can brew it into a tea to create coca tea. Cocaine is also derived from the coca coca plant, but chewing it, chewing the leaves was a longstanding way of acquiring uh this the stimulant properties, and ultimately chewing has always been a way of of, you know, dipping into

the powers of a particular plant or substance. You know, if there's some sort of medicinal property, some sort of stimulant property, uh, some sort of psychoactive property, chewing it is in many cases a way to release it, especially if the substance is not something you really want to swallow and digest, but you do want some of the

chemicals inside it. Well, another way of thinking about that is that chewing again, as part of our defense mechanism against poisons, right, a way of determining are their toxins here? And of course part of the large part of human history is figuring out which toxins you like, which toxins

are useful, uh, and in and in what quantities? Uh. And this goes beyond like medicines and drugs obviously, but you know, like just flavoring peppers and uh, you know, all matter of things that we used in our culinary traditions, their toxins we acquired from the environment, figured out exactly how we wanted to use these evolved chemical weapons for our own culinary purposes. All right, well, I think we need to take one more break and then we come back.

We'll see how Santa Anna figures into this story. Alright, we're back, and yes, you heard that right, Santa Anna, the Santa Anna. Yeah. It's one of these just really I think, ultimately kind of unexpected and quirky collisions in history. Yeah. So the next big page in the story of Chewing Gum takes us to meet this unexpected figure, an Tonio Lope Day Santa Anna, the larger than life nineteenth century Mexican military commander, revolutionary politician, statesman president of Mexico who

fought for Mexican independence. Went on to be President of Mexico I think multiple terms. Uh, And then of course later got exiled. In eighteen sixty nine, Santa Anna was exiled in the United States and living on Staten Island, and sometime around then he became interested in the idea of trying to develop chickle, the cured latex from that tree.

Chickle he wanted to develop as an industrial substitute for rubber in the production of tires, and Santa Anna thought that the profits he reaped from the development of a rubber substitute based on chickle would be enough to fund him in a return to power in Mexico, and he somehow became connected to an American inventor named Thomas Adams who lived eighteen eighteen and nineteen o five. Adams was based in New York and Adams try had to do this.

Adams tried to develop a volcanization process for chickle. Adams was also a photographer. I understand, Oh really, yeah, I didn't know that, which makes sense, you know, given that timeframe, you know, given what we've discussed in the show about photography and the sort of minds that you know, in creative types and inventive thinkers that had attracted chemistry in the eighteen sixties and seventies, that would be photography too. Yeah,

uh so I can see that. But of course he did not succeed in coming up with a vulcanization process for chickle. So when it became clear that there weren't going to be any real profits off of the off of trying to create a rubber substitute of chickle, Sam and a lost interest in the venture, but Adams stuck with it. He Adams went on to discover that the

treated chickle had interesting properties of its own. So it was not water soluble, so it wouldn't dissolve in a wet environment like the mouth, and it was very plastic and very stretchy. And by this time there was already chewing gum. To find out in the world many a mayor Parkins had become accustomed to chewing gum based on that old spruce tree resin we were talking about, but also manufacturers had largely substituted sweetened paraffin, wax and other

substances for the original spruce resin. And in eighteen seventy one Adams got on this train. He patented a process for preparing chickle for chewing, and he sold it as an alternative to paraffin wax for gum chewers, and originally I think his recipe was unsweetened gum, but by the eighteen eighties Adams chickle based gums were nationally distributed and chickle remained one of the most common ingredients in chewing gum until later, I think around the middle of the

twentieth century, when more synthetic materials became more common. I think that the whole like unsweetened sweetened divide is really interesting because it seems here it starts off as being essentially just purely recreational chewing, right, I mean, yeah, you can make a sense, you know, an argument for you know, basic like basic dental hygiene and the freshening of the breath. Certainly, but it's not it's not you know, contain, it's not

full of tobacco. It doesn't have a stimulant property to it. But then you add the sugar, and in doing so and adding a sweetener to the gum, uh, you make it a vehicle for this addictive substance that also has plenty of detrimental uh uh, you know health impacts. You know that is going to ultimately lead to the deterioration of your teeth, and it can lead to to other

health problems as well. Yeah, when we've been talking about gum for you know, people using it for dental health purposes, I would suspect that whatever those purposes, those valid purposes, maybe the introduction of sugar probably counteracts all of that, does more damage than good. And then it's ultimately it's it's as much about the sugary sweet rush as it is about anything else. I mean, even with you know,

sugar free gums today. Uh, you know, I admit that it's that that that rush of artificial sweetener is sometimes part of the enjoyment of it, Like you anticipate putting that fresh, untouched piece of gum into your mouth because you're going to get that just fresh burst of flavor. Yeah, Robert, I found an ad for for the Adams Chewing Gum Company.

Was called there Adams California Fruit Chewing Gum. I think this ad was one featured on the Wikipedia page for the Atoms Fruit Company or the Atoms Chewing Gum Company. And this, uh, this ad is crazy. It looks like something from a much later time because it's got it's like this goddess in ecstasy, putting it looks like fruit into her mouth. But I guess it's suggesting it's the gum. I'm not quite sure. Interesting, so again via the goddess imagery,

there's this kind of you know, feminization of chewing gum. Yeah, well, I mean this would have been so if this was in the late eighteen hundreds, this would have been around the time that we got the wash the article in the British Medical Journal and the other publications talking about chewing gum being this like disgusting thing that young women do.

You know, it's interesting to to to think about like dental health concerns because it brings me back to our episode on toothpaste and about just like the the increasing need for toothpaste or an effective substance like toothpaste to keep up with the the influx of sugars and other um, you know, mainly sugars into the human diet, uh and leading to a lot of dental problems. And of course one of the problems with having poor dental whole hygiene is you're going to have poor breath as well, You're

gonna have halitosis and uh uh. And so perhaps there was an increase I mean once tempted to think there might have been an increase in the demand for some sort of breath freshening product. But at the same time, when we see that that outside of the European context, it seems like there's always been or there there has long been a need for some sort of breath freshening product.

So I'm not sure we're exactly to land on that, but without a doubt, the influx of sugar into uh, the diet, of the European diet during this time would have led to some bad breath, no doubt about that. And remember again, um brushing teeth with toothpaste was not a really widespread common practice until like the twentieth century, right right, So we're kind of in the dark ages of like that where where the where the diet had grown worse, but the but the the dental hygiene practices

had not risen up to meet the demand. Yet, you know, I was just thinking another thing that I suspect very likely to be opera ended, like that British Medical Journal article and and the other ones talking about the actresses and and young ladies students chewing gum is probably just the same sort of like sexist trend detection that causes like adult men to think that girl younger girls are always on their phones, not noticing that boys are just as much men are on on their phones all the

time as well. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. There's probably a word for that, like sex selective print trend detection. I'm not sure what the it's probably out there. Oh but hey, we gotta talk about Wriggley's Oh yeah, bring it on. So another big name in the history of chewing gum, of course is William Wriggley Jr. Uh, Wriggley is just a great last name. It implies that you're some kind of eel like writhing around and you can't can't get a grip on you. So Wriggley of course

began as a salesman. You know, there are a lot of salesman making it big around this time. In the eight nineties, he was trying to establish himself as a seller of commercial goods, and he ran like Bogo style promotions where customers you'd buy one product, you get another product, right so maybe, but I don't know what they really You might buy a velocipede and you get a free box of snuff. But but apparently one of his very

popular promotional giveaways was chewing gum. And Wrigley was so impressed with how popular the chewing gum was as a promotional giveaway that he was like, well, I should just sell chewing gum. So he decided to get into the gum business, launching brands of his own, including brands like Wriggly, Spearmint uh. And I was reading a history dot com article by Elizabeth Knicks about some of his marketing practices. I just want to quote this because this is so great.

H So those from Nick's article quote. Because the chewing gum field had grown crowded with competitors, Wrigley decided he'd make his products stand out by spending heavily on advertising and direct marketing. In nineteen fifteen, the Wrigley Company kicked off a campaign in which it sent free samples of its gum to millions of Americans list listed in phone books. Another promotion entailed sending sticks of gum to US children

on their second birthday. I hadn't really thought about how easy it is to mail a piece of gum, but of course it is an can stick it in a pack of baseball cards. It's it'll stick in an envelope as well. Second birthday? Did I read that right? Second birthday? Should kids beat you in gum when they're two? I mean, probably not. I don't remember letting my son have have gum.

I kind of I kind of discourage gum now and he's seven, but but he really he wants it, you know, like when he sees one of those big gumball machines, of course he wants to get a giant gumball and stick it in his mouth. I mean, I'm no expert on raising children, but something seems wrong there. I don't think two year olds are supposed to have gum right fresher than the mail though, But still isn't genius direct marketing? Yeah, you should have been in the direct marketing of cocaine.

That would work even better. I'm glad you brought that up. I'm gonna I'm gonna come back to that question. Well, I mean, so after this period we get more into the modern styles of gum were you know, after World War two or so, many natural gum bases like chickle were largely being replaced east with new sym synthetic rubbers and waxes, and that sort of led us to the gum world we have today. Of course, we've got you know,

all kinds of other things, artificial sweeteners and all that. Yeah, you get your spicy gums, you get your fruit gums, you get your flavor crystals, you get your gravy flavored gums. Maybe there's a lot of novelty gum. There's a lot of novelty gum. It's sure, it sure is. But then you still have like the very traditional juicy fruit style gum. Like it's really we live in a golden age of

chewing and bubble gum. Now. To come back to something we we touched on at the very beginning is that it's this idea that chewing gum also helps you focus, you know, not merely you know, in a pro wrestling ring or or you know, on on the sports field, but but like just you know, say, setting in a desk working that it can help focus your mind. Yeah, and this has actually been the subject of a lot

of research. Strangely enough, I wonder how much of it is funded by the chewing gum industry, I think, right, But there have been ton of studies in in psychology and uh, I don't know what other fields this would apply to. I guess would be in psychology, where the question is does chewing gum make people do better on various kinds of cognitive tasks? And there appears to be, at least as far as I was reading, some evidence that there's a little bit of a cognitive boost that

people get from chewing gum. But it appears to apply for a few minutes after gum has been chewed, not while you're chewing gum, or at least that's what I found in for example, I studied from two thousand eleven published an appetite by Hour at All called Cognitive Advantages

of Chewing Gum. Now you see them, now you don't uh, And so it was talking about giving people a battery of cognitive tests either while they were chewing gum or after they chewed gum, compared with the performance of controls who didn't chew anything at all, and the right quote, chewing gum was associated with performance advantages on multiple measures when gum was chewed five minutes before but not ring cognitive testing. The benefits, however, persisted only for the first

fifteen to twenty minutes of the testing session. And did not extend to all cognitive domains. To explain this pattern of results, it's proposed that the time limited nature of performance benefits can be attributed to mastication induced arousal. Maybe Fletcher was right. Yeah, well, I mean it comes back to the fact that when you're chewing, you're using a whole lot of muscles in your face, you're producing saliva. It's uh, I could see, yeah, it's it's waking you

up a little bit. I mean, it's the comes back to chewing gum and church, right. Yeah. But then also there's probably a conflict the author's thing going on when you're trying to chew gum while you're doing a task, because you might be benefiting from some arousal, but you're also sort of lightly dividing your attention if you're also chewing. Oh, that's true. And then when you're done chewing, you're you're revved up. Now you're ready to go. Yeah, so you

have this mild increase. So yeah, it seems to me that there might be a little bit of a cognitive boost from from chewing gum a little bit after you chew, but it doesn't seem earth shaking. I wonder why this hasn't though led to more Like I'm sure there's some products out there that are marketed as being like a like a performance enhancing gum, and uh, I assure, yeah,

but performance enhancing everything. But given how how much marketing is out there regarding you know, various you know, attention boosting, memory boosting, uh, herbal supplements and so forth, Like, why am I not being bombarded with marketing for gums that contain the same thing? Because when you look back to our history of chewing things again, in many cases we're chewing things in order to get some sort of uh, you know, a mild stimulant out of the material we're chewing.

You look even to nicotine gum today used as a way of, you know, of of getting people off of off of cigarettes and having them consume their nicotine through chewable gum, which you would chew I think for like fifteen min it's at a time I think that's the uh, the idea. Uh So why don't we Why haven't we seen more drug delivery through chewing gum during the history of chewing gum? I wonder if it falls back into like the gender divide that seemed to be there is

that why we didn't have cocaine gums. I wonder, I mean I when when you talk about the performance enhancing gum concept, I mean cynical part of me wonders if it's just cheaper to make placebo pills than it is to make placebo gums. Yeah, but who knows what the future will hold. It is worth pointing out with the cannabis gums are already on the market, it should not come as a surprise to anybody um. And then likewise, there's continued research into things we might be able to

do with gum. For instance, there's some studies looking at using gums containing um uh phospho peptide, amorphous calcium phosphate, and xylotol as a way of creating gums that are even healthier for our dental hygiene. That it could be you know, mark get even more for dental health. Likewise,

chewing gum may also impact our wearable technology. Uh. There's a two thousand fifteen Time article by Alexandra uh Sifferlan who discussed Applied Materials and Interfaces Journal article in which the researchers treated chewed gum like pre chewed gum that one of the researchers that chew they treated it with ethanol and carbon nanotubes to create a sensor that could quote detect body motion and humidity changes, which could be

used to track breathing. Uh. But in this, you know, it's not so much the gum is a thing that's chewed, but as coming back to the material itself, you know, which is an interesting interesting to look at this chain, you know, from from things we chew two glues and rubbers back into chewing gum and then perhaps into meta materials that will be useful in the future. Interesting. Yeah, I had to know this was going to get into carbon nanotube based chewing gum, smart gum of the future.

I mean, I wonder if there's been any cool slife by treatments of that, like some sort of smart chewing gum that you chew it up and now it's activated and you can use it for all sorts of elaborate things. Well, you know, I feel like I only chew VANTI black. Well, it does remind mcgiver would use a bubble gum, right, maybe use chewing gum to fix things and there, you know, and and in that he's kind of getting it kind of brings us back to the iceman and potential applications

of the material they were chewing. So, uh, you know, it all comes full circle. Well, this episode has certainly provided me with some things to chew over. I hope we didn't I hope we didn't bite off more than we could chew. Uh hopefully not. Hopefully not. But here's one thing that that's for certain. Everybody out there listening to this episode probably has something to share, you know about either your personal relationship with gum, what you like,

what you don't like, or other chewable substances. What's your relationship with them. Perhaps you're from a culture that has a has a traditional chewed substance. If if that's the case, let us know. I'd love to hear from you if you ever uh have you ever chewed coco leaves? Uh in uh you know in South America? Uh, you know, in a while on a hike. I would be interested to hear about that. Are you a former tobacco chew or do you have any insights about that habit? Uh?

Maybe you didn't like something we said and you were going to write in to chew us out. At any rate, whatever your feedback might be uh, we would love to hear from you uh, and you can reach out to us, but before you do, be sure to check out invention pot dot com. That's the mother ship. That's where we find all the episodes of this show. And if you want to support Invention the best things you can do or of course make sure you have subscribed to it,

make sure you're telling your friends about it. And if you have the ability to leave us a nice you know, assortment of stars or a nice review wherever you got this podcast, well we urge you to do so because that really helps us out huge Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Maya Cole. If you would like to get in touch with us with feed back on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email

us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio is the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H