Gum Report

Gum. A simple three letter word and a delicious treat, but have you ever wondered how gum came to be? Like who invented it or what’s it made of? Well I hope you enjoy unwrapping the truth about the sticky history of chewing gum! The Greeks were chewing a type of gum as early as the year 50 AD. This proves that gum has been existing for a long time but the first bubble gum wasn’t invented until 1906 by a guy name, Frank Fleer. He called his oh so sticky gum blibber-blubber. Surprisingly Frank’s gum wasn’t a hit, he barely sold any due to the fact that every time you blew a bubble, the gum would stick to your skin and you had to scrub it off with turpentine. Ouch, how painful! Twenty years later, a new product came out called dubble bubble by Walter Diemer, a man who worked for Frank Fleer. While in the process of making the first batch of gum, he added the color pink to make it look more appealing and then, boom! What an instant popular concoction it became. Soon after Mr. Diemer’s experiment many others began to experiment with gum by adding many different colors and flavors! As you know, gum has been around for a long time but have you ever realized how much it has evolved? Many years ago the Native Americans would chew on the sap from spruce trees and soon passed that tradition on. The early American settlers made a chewing gum from spruce sap and beeswax; doesn’t sound too appetizing, does it? In 1848, 21 year old John Curtis decided to change his line of work. He wanted to manufacture, package, and peddle chewing gum. Little did he know that it would become so popular but with the help of his dad, he would boil up a batch of resin, skim off the bark and twigs, roll it out into a slab, cut it into strips, and bathe them in cornstarch. Young Curtis sold the strips of gum at two for a penny. How cheap that was! Nowadays gum is simply made out of chicle; latex sap that come from the sapodilla tree, sweeteners, corn syrup, and flavoring!