Myths About What We Eat and Drink
Don’t swallow your gum! You must remember being warned as a child not to swallow that piece of chewing gum. Even though swallowing it seemed so much easier than spitting it out and finding a proper place to throw it away, you always knew that gum might stay in your stomach for seven years. That’s enough to make anyone pause before they let that piece of gum slide down their throats.
Almost every honest gum-chewer would admit to swallowing a piece of gum every now and then. What happens to all of that gum? Is it really sitting around in your stomach for seven years?
Chewing gum is made out of gum base, sweeteners, colouring and flavouring. The gum base is pretty indigestible stuff; it is a mixture of elastomers, resins, fats, emulsifiers and waxes (sounds delicious, right?). Most of the time, your stomach really can’t break down the gum the way it would break down other foods. Sugar and other sweeteners in gum might get absorbed, but those waxes and resins and elastomers resist the powers of your stomach juices to break them up. However, your digestive system has another way to deal with things you swallow. After all, we eat lots of things that we can’t fully digest. The gut just keeps moving them along until they make it all the way through the intestines and come out the other end. So gum usually ends up in your toilet one to two days later, pooed out by the power of peristalsis, which propels material through your bowels. Even though gum is sticky, it is usually no match for the power of your gut.
The system can get gummed up though (ha ha). Swallowing a huge wad of gum or swallowing many small pieces of gum in a short time can cause a blockage within the digestive system (most often in children, who have a smaller-diameter digestive tract than adults do), but this is extremely rare. Kids are more likely to get blocked up by gum if they swallow the gum along with other things that can get stuck with it (like coins or sunflower seeds).
While we don’t recommend doing it all the time, swallowing your gum is really no big deal. It will most likely pass right on through to the toilet bowl.