Chewing gum: seven years to digest?
If you swallow your chewing gum, it will take seven years to digest. Or not. Scientific American gets to the bottom of this sticky situation. The bottom line is that swallowed gum isn't easily digested but it does make it out the other end, albeit slower than other edibles. Still, it's apparently a better idea to spit than swallo. From the article:
As Milov and his colleagues wrote in Pediatrics in 1998, chronic gum swallowing—or swallowing gum in conjunction with other indigestibles—can spell trouble. The team's report describes three children suffering from gum-based gastrointestinal blockages, two of whom received gum as positive reinforcement for good behavior and regularly disposed of the treat by swallowing it. In both cases the children became constipated, as the gum snowballed into a substantial "taffylike" mass that required extraction. In the third patient, a girl just a year and a half old, four coins were found lodged in the esophagus, fused into a single blob by a wad of chewing gum.Link
"I've had another case that was really interesting," Milov adds, "and that was somebody who swallowed sunflower seeds—[and] also, the shells." Upon examining the patient's lower digestive tract, Milov found "all these very prickly seeds that were congealed around gum," forming a body that he describes as "like a porcupine."
the latest
latest episodes
Perhaps I'm just a freak, but if I chew gum for more than an hour it digests well before I have a chance to swallow it...
Wait...a year and a half old? How do you explain to someone that young that for this particular food, unlike all others, you chew it as long as you want but don't swallow it? This is a child that swallows coins, for heaven's sake.
I had the same thought as Ivan256. Once or twice I fell asleep with chewing gum in my mouth and when I woke up again, it had turned into a gooey pap with almost no cohesion. Maybe it would really theoretically take your body years to fully digest these remains, but there's no way they'll cling/stick to stuff, let alone stay in you for longer than normal.
However, I don't think it has anything to do with whether you're a freak; I guess it's just that all gum is not made equal.
My Mum lied to me! I believed her when she told us Chewing Gum wrapped round your throat and you died if you swallowed it. My friend claimed it was your heart it wrapped round if you swallowed it and that caused you to die. Either way it stopped us swallowing Gum (when we were allowed it)