According to one legend, gum stays in our bodies for 7 years: is that really true? What happens if we happen to swallow chewing gum.
What happens to our bodies if we happen to swallow chewing gum? The Institute of Human Anatomy explained it in a video format on YouTube in which myths and legends about the behavior of the human body are taken into account, to understand if there is really something scientifically founded in everything we happen to hear from non-specialists.
In particular, a myth would like that chewing gum, if swallowed, remains in our body for 7 years. Is it really so, or is it a legend told by mothers to scare their children who want to take too much sugar?
First of all, how is chewing gum made, the ingredients
First of all, it is important to understand what chewing gum is made of: it is sugars, colorants and substances that give flavor. If you then read carefully the ingredients of which a gum is made, you will find, among others, the so-called “gum base”, an umbrella under which some substances are included that apparently the producers prefer not to declare.
This is a combination of more than 40 ingredients authorized by the bodies that deal with the control of food substances put on the market, which, combined in a different way and according to a certain dosage, allow the gum to have the taste it has. In short, we are talking more about a “trade secret” to protect competition between producers of chewing gum.
How does a chewing gum behave inside our body
The “gum base”, however, is what gives the chewing gum an elasticity and a structure such that it cannot be digested either in the oral cavity, through chewing, or in the stomach, where the chewing gum has to deal with hydrochloric acid and other enzymes. Does this mean that gum, if swallowed, will stay in our bodies forever?
In fact, no. The gum, in fact, will take the road to the small intestine and from there will simply be expelled from our body like any other foreign body that can not be digested, such as a button or a pendant that a child swallows by mistake.
Among other questions that perhaps we have asked ourselves and to which science has tried to give an answer, there is also one about left-handed people: are they really smarter than right-handed people? How long, at the most, can a man live?
Giuseppe Giordano