Cheri Wine, (Edison State College): Sticky Situation.

10. April 2010 by student.

Chewing Gum????? Who knew?????????? 

Chewing Gum - Function: noun, Date: 1850 - a sweetened and flavored insoluble plastic material (as a preparation of chicle) used for chewing. (Merriam Webmaster Dictionary)
Chewing gum is some kind of flavored and sweetened rubber material for chewing.
Chewing gum is the world’s most common habit. This habit dates back to ancient times.
Recently archaeologist found three wads of 9000 year old chewed birch resin on the Swedish island of Orust. After detailed examination by dental experts, they concluded that this piece of resin was chewed by young person (a caveman teenager).
So, chewing gum has a really long story behind it.
One of the inventors, of modern chewing gum, was William Wrigley. Today almost 35% of chewing gum is manufactured by Wrigley Company. The basic process of manufacturing chewing gum has changed little, since manufacture began in late 19th century.
It’s true that chewing gum has been around in many forms for many years. Even astronauts chew chewing gums! Only problem is disposal… so they have to swallow them…
Chewing gum has many benefits. People have found relaxation and comfort in the simple act of chewing gum. Somehow it relieves muscular and nervous tension.
Chewing gum also inspirits artists. Over the last 10 years, Maurizio Savini, Italian artist has been creating sculptures using thousands of pieces of chewing gums!
Some sources indicate that today there are 115 companies that are manufacturing chewing gums, located in 30 countries (41 of them in the United States only!). In many stores that sell chewing gum, you can find more than 30 different brands of chewing gums!
There is some amazing statistics about chewing gum:
More than 100,000 tons of chewing gum being consumed every year.

Every year over 374 trillion sticks of chewing gum are made.
In the next 5 years, over 1 million metric tones of chewing gum will be produced.
The Chewing Gum Industry is profitable market. The world’s chewing gum industry is estimated to be worth approximately US $19 billion.
If each piece of gum is chewed for 30 minutes, that is 187 billion hours of gum-chewing per year.

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