Sticky Business

Sticky Business

1 Thousands of different brands of chewing gum are available in the shops today. They have different logos, but the products inside are very similar. Each company tries to find different ways of selling their product.

2 Some producers say that chewing gum helps you both concentrate and relax. Recent TV advertisements also tell us that 20 minutes of chewing can prevent tooth decay. Research has shown that when people are told this, sales increase.

3  It is big business now, but chewing gum is not a modern invention. For centuries, the ancient Greeks chewed gum. The gum was obtained from mastic trees, which were found mainly in Greece and Turkey.

4 It was in the 19th century, however, that the process of making modern chewing gum was developed. In the late 1860s, chicle was discovered in sapodilla trees in Mexican rainforest. Gum made from chicle is much smoother and more elastic than gum from mastic trees. 

5 The process of collecting chicle from the rainforests is difficult. Chicle flows more easily before the sun comes up, so it is usually collected at night. The chicle collectors (chicleros) go into the hot, humid forests and climb up the sapodilla trees in the dark.

6 When it comes out the tree, chicle is liquid and therefore difficult to transport. So it is heated on small fires. When it cools down, it is made into large sticky blocks. These are then transported to production centres. The price paid for a kilo of gum when it leaves the forest is $1.75. When it reaches the shops, consumers pay about 100 times that price.

7 The companies have no difficulty in selling to the consumer, however. Chewing gum is a big business. If all the pieces of chewing gum produced every year were laid end to end, they would stretch to the moon and back six times!