Stuff You Should Know - Does Gum Stay in your Stomach for Seven Years?

Episode Date: May 22, 2008

Does gum really stay in your stomach for Seven Years? Josh and Chuck take on the parental myth of gum swollowing. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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only I can see you. What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like, he was a god. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, staff writer here at HowStuffWorks.com. And with me for the first of what I only hope it will be many times is my fellow staff writer, staff writer extraordinaire, actually, Charles Bright. How are you doing, Chuck? I'm doing great. Those very kind things. Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for coming.

I appreciate it. So, Chuck, I have a question for you. When you were a kid and you popped a piece of gum in your mouth, were you ever told that if you swallowed it that it would stay in you for seven years? I was. I was told that all the time and I don't chew gum today for that reason. Wow, that's horrible because as it turns out, that's a lie perpetrated by adults on young children, which is terrible in and of itself. But you want to tell us what gum is? Well, yeah, I'm really not sure why they would say things like this because gum is really kind of harmless. I don't know who started that whole lie. But gum is really just four different things, Josh. It's flavor, it's sweetener, it's softener, and it's the gum base. And the good news is that

three of those things can be broken down by our body. Good news, yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, when you those things break down, actually, is when gum loses its flavor, which is when most people toss gum out. But I understand you actually swallow your gum. I love to swallow my gum. I haven't spit a piece of gum out since I was like two years old. So when I was researching this, I was really glad to find, you know, personally, that that that it isn't true at all. I bet, I bet that was pretty scary before it was that for you. You know, that that base you were talking about the component in question, right, actually dates back to about 1860, a guy named General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana. Does that name ring a bell? You know, I think I've heard of him. But

he was the guy who captured the Alamo, right, actually slaughtered all the defenders inside. Right. We're supposed to remember him. Well, no, you remember the guys who were defending it. Oh, actually, that probably depends on whether you're from Mexico or the US. Right. Yeah, two sides of the same coin. Right. But anyway, Santa Ana achieved later fame, well, kind of fame, by introducing Chickle to a guy named Thomas Adams. And his name might also ring a bell. He made that awful gum. What is it called? The blackjack chewing on tar paper. It's awful black licorice gum. But Adams made a mint off of it. And he actually had a contract with Santa Ana to, I guess, share in the proceeds since Santa Ana introduced

Chickle to him. But Chickle? Chickle is, you know, it's the gum base. Okay. Yeah. It was cheek clay, actually. It basically took gum into the 19th century or the 20th century or now the 21st century. So Thomas Adams actually did an honorous contract. And by this time, Santa Ana, who was in exile and had lost a leg, was now left penniless and destitute New York, thanks to Adams. Penniless. Penniless and legless. Penniless and legless. Yeah. Not a good combination. But long story short, Santa Ana introduced this component that mothers everywhere have lied to their children about not being digestible to gum. Right. So, I mean, if we have this base, if we have this this this item in question, what, you know, that can't be broken down, you know, why doesn't it

stick around? Well, it's basically like anything else you put in your mouth, Josh. It goes down your esophagus and into your stomach and enzymes and acids kind of start bubbling up and they break everything down. So far, so good. Yeah. And then what can't be broken down there gets broken down in the intestines. Your liver and pancreas kind of help out the intestines there. And then what's left after that is just the gum base. And that moves into your colon and it's pretty much a one way street from there. Yeah. Yeah, you don't want to go the other way because that could be very bad. No. And actually, there have been a couple of occasions that that support right this this old wives tale that gum stays in you for seven years. Yeah, the poor kid as we call him. We yeah, we've

been calling him around the office poor kid. Right. And quite rightly poor kid was a four-year-old who had suffered intense constipation for half of his life two years. And it's no wonder why. No, actually, his parents, it turns out, had been potty training him. And any time he was successful, they gave him a piece of gum. And apparently this kid was really successful. Right. He was good on the potty. Yeah, he was he was getting like five to seven pieces of gum a day and swallowing all of them. Right. So I guess his parents were really focused on the potty training and not the fact that he wasn't spitting this gum out. Right. And you know, what was the result? Well, well, poor kid's taken to the doctor. The doctors finally, I guess, crack him open.

And they find, which is, I guess, described by the finest assemblage of words I've ever seen in my entire life, a taffy like trail of fecal material and poor kid. Yeah, that's that is terrible. Right. So well, the good news is that they were able to suction all this out of his rectum and send him along his merry way. Right. Which I imagine was a life changing experience for poor kid. That was a good day. He does stand as a cautionary tale, though, although he didn't crack the seven year mark. He was only four when this procedure was done, which is, I guess, a good thing for everybody. Right. And the world will never know. It's like a tootsie pop. Right. Uh-huh. How many legs? If you want to know any more gross stuff about gum and digestion,

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Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. On the new podcast, The Turning Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Ballinger. He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you, only I can see you. What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like he was a god. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.