Chewing Gum

The Chewing Gum Concept

This may or may not be right however it serves a purpose. A century or so ago, chewing tobacco was widely used but had terrible side effects, notwithstanding nicotine addiction and gum rot/tooth loss there was an awful lot of spit.

In more modern times this has been replaced with Chewing Gum which has reduced gum disease and tooth loss as we now know much more of the workings of the mouth.

Chewing Gum was once sold on its flavours, ‘Cool mint’, ‘Tasty Fruit’ and is now more or less sold on the benefits of ‘Fresh Breath’.

What is Chewing Gum?

When you think about it, our digestive system is designed to break down anything we eat and digest what we can from it in order to provide us with the nutrients we need.

From ‘O Level’ biology the digestive system starts in the mouth with very alkaline saliva and continues in the stomach which is highly acid. This is a very effective mechanism for ensuring nasty things don’t get into your system since there are many bugs that can survive in an alkaline environment and many that can survive in and acid one but not many that can survive in both. An excellent defence mechanism designed for life a few 100,000 years ago like most of our systems and like most of our systems some things have out evolved us which is why we get food poisoning.

So what is it that chewing gum is made of? Why can it be chewed for hours on end and not disappear down into our gizzard?

According to the Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum) “The hydrocarbon polymers approved to be in chewing gum are styrene-butadiene rubber, isobutylene, isoprene copolymer, paraffin wax, and petroleum wax.”

Apart from that list of chemicals ringing alarm bells as it should, why would you want to even consider consuming paraffin wax – would you eat a candle?

There are articles including the quoted one which go on about the health benefits but oddly, they are not as a result of ingesting those chemicals (as far as I read anyway).

The social problem with Chewing Gum

There are several problems with Chewing Gum:

The Pavement

The local council has had to spend a lot of my tax money on a machine that removes chewing carelessly spat out by ignorant people. This high powered jet spray which lets face it beats the pants off anything you can buy at Halfords fires a very high powered acid laden jet at the chewing gum that has welded itself to the pavement, yet still people chew this stuff.

 The Shoes

The advantage of treading in any kinds of animal poo is that it will come off your shoes, you may need to drag your foot across some grass or use a hose pipe and a brush but it will come off.

The thought of using something disposable to drag something indestructible from the tread on the sole of your shoe is cringe worthy, it is hard to do this without thinking that this substance has been slopping around in someone else’s saliva for hours on end which brings me neatly to the last annoyance and of course the reason for this article. . .

The act of Chewing

People who were brought up properly were trained to eat with their mouths closed. this avoids anyone having to see partially chewed/digested food and of course hearing that awful noise.

The reason this posts exists is because of inconsideration.

To the person who was sat behind me (or possibly in front as we were in rear facing seats) on the 12:09 to Bristol Temple Meads, Carriage B. . “Please close your mouth when chewing gum, we could all hear your literally sloppy mannerisms and were less than impressed with the bubble popping. Please also note that doing so for 30 mins travel time plus the stationary time at Bath Spa cannot be good for you as it increases the risk of physical harm by irate passengers. Finally, don’t be so ignorant of those around you, try a little consideration oh and get a life while you’re reconsidering your approach”

When I’m Emperor, this kind of behaviour will be a capital punishment because it falls foul of the following areas of my dictatorship:

1. Environmental damage (needing chemicals to clean up)
2. Pollution (the mess on the pavement)
3. Anti-Social behaviour (who will talk to a sloppy mouthed chewer and how did you survive on carriage B?)

That’s ‘3 strikes’ so you’re out pal!