About Chewing Gum - Chewing Gum Statistics

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 a flavored and sweetened rubber material for chewing.

Chewing gum is the world’s most common habit. This habit dates back to ancient times.

Recently archaeologists found three wads of 9000-year-old chewed birch resin on the Swedish island of Orust. After a detailed examination by dental experts, they concluded that this piece of resin was chewed by a young person (a caveman teenager).

So, chewing gum has a 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 remained the same since manufacturing began in the late 19th century.

Chewing gum has indeed been around in many forms for many years. Even astronauts chew chewing gums! The 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 ten years, Maurizio Savini, an Italian artist, has been creating sculptures using thousands of pieces of chewing gums!

Some sources indicate that today, 115 companies manufacture chewing gums in 30 countries (41 in the United States only!). You can find more than 30 different chewing gum brands in many stores that sell chewing gum!

There are some fantastic statistics about chewing gum:

More than 100,000 tons of chewing gum are consumed every year.

Every year over 374 trillion sticks of chewing gum are made.

Over 1 million metric tonnes of chewing gum will be produced in five years.

The Chewing Gum Industry is a 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.