I’ve switched chewing gum.
For most people this would not be of particular note; in fact, I daresay most people do not have enough chewing gum brand loyalty to be able to “switch”. I, however, am what marketing people call a “heavy user”. I chew a lot of gum. Between a pack and two packs a day – and not those wimpy Trident packs, either, but the big eighteen-stick packs.
There are a couple of reasons for my inordinate chewing gum usage. Originally, always having chewing gum handy obviated a need to worry about my breath. Over time, that took second place to a simpler reason for chewing gum, namely habit. If I am not chewing gum and I think about chewing gum, then I want to be chewing gum. Yeah, it’s probably risen to the level of a minor addiction, although the withdrawal symptoms are pretty negligible.
The other reason I go through so much gum is that I chew three sticks at a time. The reason for this is that I have a big mouth. And if I try to wrap that big mouth around just one small stick of gum, I bite my cheek. Three sticks gives a large enough wad that I rarely if ever bite my cheek.
Cheek biting was much more problematic before I switched toothpastes, mind you. Back in the days before I had heard of sodium lauryl sulfate, a bitten cheek was a guaranteed canker sore, with a probable outbreak of other canker sores accompanying it. Now that I no longer use toothpaste containing SLS, a bitten cheek is just a sharp pain and a few days of swelling.
But I’ve gotten used to that nice big baseball-player size wad in there, so it’s three pieces for me. I know that it doesn’t provide the best impression; my grandmother used to recite a bit of doggerel to the tune of:
Something like that. And she had a point – chewing gum drops at least fifteen IQ points from almost anyone’s appearance. But I have the habit and looking ignorant is a price I’m willing to pay.
For the last, oh, decade at least, my gum of choice has been Wrigley’s Extra. I like the winterfresh flavor and the classic bubble gum flavor, and in my experience Extra has the longest lasting flavor of any of the sugarless gums. (Of course I only chew sugarless.) At a pack a day, and a dollar a pack (a price which has long been stable; only within the last few months have most stores broken through the dollar a pack barrier.), that’s three and a half thousand dollars I’ve handed to the merchants of chew over that period.
But now I’m moving to something new.
No, not chewing tobacco.
Xylitol. It’s a sugar substitute, made from birch trees, that not only provides the cavity avoidance of sugarless gum, but actually fights cavities by creating environmental conditions in your mouth which kill the biological agents which cause cavities. That’s right, it actually fights cavities.
Apparently, the stuff was discovered by the Finns, and at this point pretty much all chewing gum in Europe is now xylitol based. Over here… over here it’s harder to find. I’m not sure why, but I suspect something involving existing supply chains, organizational inertia, and various payoffs and oligarchic conniving is involved. Remember, Nutra-sweet got fast-tracked through the FDA by none other than Donald Rumsfeld, when he was out of government and into management.
But xylitol is, belatedly, making an appearance. I have discovered that Ice Breakers Ice Cubes – “Ice Breakers” being the brand and “Ice Cubes” being the form factor – is xylitol based. I’m a bit dubious of chewing gum that doesn’t come in sticks, and of course the “cubes” form factor is really just another way to charge more for less actual product, but xylitol wins this round. Farewell, Extra, hello, Ice Breakers.
Stay tuned for reports on the new environment I’m creating in my mouth.
- Sun Ra