History of Chewing Gum

The history of chewing gum dates back to the ancient Greeks who chewed tree resins. The patent of the chewing gum we chew today was taken by a dentist in America in 1869. In 1928, another American, Walter Diemer, invented bubble gum. Although bubble gum is available in all sizes and colors, nothing in bubble blowing can replace the first “little pink gum”.

The adventure of chewing gum begins with gum paste, a substance that makes gum chewy. Traditionally at that time, this paste was made from wood resin. Today, this material is made of plastic and rubber. The synthetic gum paste is poured into a blender, then color and flavor are added. When the dough starts to mix, glucose syrup is poured into the mixture to taste. Glucose syrup helps keep gum paste soft as it is liquid. Then, grape sugar, a powdered sweetener, is added to this mixture. All these materials will last 20 minutes. blended. With the mixing process, a heat is created that melts all the material together. Mixture; When the bread dough reaches the consistency, it becomes ready.

Mastic dough that has become thick; The dough is transferred to a machine called a pre-sprayer by transport cars. This machine squeezes the mixture through a narrow end, just like squeezing a toothpaste from a tube. It turns large and bulky dough rolls into thin strips after squeezing. The thin strips prepared are now ready to be processed in sprayers in their current state. Sprayers squeeze each strip in the actual size of bubble gum. The gums that come out of the sprayers for a long and continuous period are then divided into bite-sized pieces.

In this spraying process, the gum heats up, if they are cut and packaged in this state, they will stick to their packaging. Therefore, the next step is to take the gums to the cooling section. Gums for 15 minutes at 3 to 7 degrees Celsius. kept waiting. When the bubble gum came out, it was cool enough to be suitable for cutting and packaging. It performs these 2 processes on a single machine in less than seconds. Gums that enter serially from one side of the production line are bite-cut in series. With the help of an apparatus, all the gums are pushed towards the end of the production line to be packaged and the two ends of the packaging container are folded closed. The packaging machine processes 900 gum per minute. With the latest technological developments, these numbers vary from machine to machine.

In packaging, which is the final stop, the correct amount of gum for each tube moves towards the weighing section to be automatically measured. Chewing gum packages are sealed with plastic to prevent air leakage. This process helps to keep the gum fresh.

The reason the bubble gum is pink is that when Walter Diemer invented it in 1928, he only had pink gum paste. Since then, the color of bubble gum has always remained pink if one remembers.