A brief search on Amazon.com gets you a listing of over nine thousand items of chewing gum. They come it tubs and boxes and cartons with many colors, flavors, with or without sugar and artificial flavors. Theres also bubble gum in all its varieties. Chewing gum marketers make many claims about organic ingredients, natural flavors, freshness of breath, cavity and gum disease prevention. Modern chewing gum is made up of a gum base combined with artificial sweeteners, softeners, coloring and flavorings. So who invented chewing gum? Lets find out.
Ancient Greeks literally chewed the gum or resin from the mastic tree, and called it mastiche. The name is derived from the Greek word mastichan, meaning to chew. This is also the root of the English word, masticate. Even today, in many languages mastic is used as a synonym for gum. The mastic tree, Pistacia lentiscus, which is sometimes referred to as Yemen or arabic gum. Mastiche is known as tears of Chios, after the island of Chios where it was harvested. It oozes out as droplets of resin from the bark and is sun dried. When chewed, mastic tears first emit a bitter taste which turns into a refreshingly cedar or piney flavor as the resin softens.
Mastic resin is used even today as a food flavor, as a medicine and in high grade varnish. The plant itself is used as an ornamental plant. Dioscorides, the Greek physician and botanist, described the medicinal qualities of mastic, which include its stomach soothing properties, in his treatise, De Materia Medica (About Medical Substances). More recently researchers have discovered in mastic antibacterial and anti-fungal properties that are useful in controlling plaque and for healing peptic ulcers. They have also identified the most active antibacterial extract, isomasticadienolic acid.
In the meanwhile Mayans were chewing tsictle (called chicle in the US), the gum from the evergreen sapodilla tree, Manilkara zapota, while North American Indians enjoyed the sap from spruce trees, of the genus Picea. The latter passed this habit to settlers who improved it by combining spruce sap with beeswax.
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