Chewing Gum

Chewing gum is a confection built around an insoluble gum base that provides its characteristic chew. The gum base is coated and infused with sweeteners, flavourings, and softeners that release during chewing, eventually leaving the flavourless base behind.

Modern chewing gum comes in two main forms: traditional sugar-sweetened gum and sugar-free varieties sweetened with polyols like xylitol or sorbitol. Sugar-free gum now dominates the market. Formats range from sticks and pellets to dragée-style coated pieces.

While its origins trace back to ancient practices of chewing tree resins, today’s gum is a manufactured product with synthetic or heavily processed gum bases that have largely replaced natural chicle.

Wild
photograph to come — from twenty years of markets, farms and kitchens

How it's made

The gum base — historically chicle (a natural latex from the sapodilla tree) but now mostly synthetic polymers and resins — is melted and purified, then blended with sweeteners (sugar or sugar alcohols), corn syrup or glycerine for texture, and concentrated flavourings such as peppermint or spearmint oil. The warm mixture is rolled into thin sheets, cut or moulded into the desired shape, and often coated with a hard candy shell or dusted with powdered sweetener before packaging.

Nutrition (per 100g)

Energy 361kcal
Protein 0g
Carbs 94.3g
Fat 0.3g
Fibre 2.4g Sugar 66.1g
Mass Distribution

1 stick is about 3 g — roughly 10 kcal of this.

What it costs the planet (per kilo)

Carbon ≈2.88kg
Freshwater ≈505.51L
Land ≈2.25m²

≈ Estimated — worked out from a category-typical value further up its supply chain. Where this comes from →

Where it comes from

Keeping one at home? Track yours in your cubud →

Where this data comes from

Nutrition data from

USDA

How it was calculated

SR Legacy

Full credits, licences, and methods: the sources page →

Where to next

made fromChicle, product shares a sourceChicle
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