OMG I've been chewing PLASTIC!

[a nameless entity]

Hey m8's. Earlier tonight I watched a rather scary documentary on TV called "The Dark Side of the Chew".

Back in the dark ages of the early 60's when I was a kid; I learned that chewing gum was made from the sap of a certain type of tree, and that this sap was called chicle. (Hence the name of "Chiclets" for one of the brands of chewing gum.)

But it turns out that perhaps by the mid 1940's, and certainly by the early 1950's, world demand far outstripped supply. So a new artificial substitute had to be found. Well they found one. Plastic. YES, plastic, with some petroleum based long chain polymers added.
Then it's dyed and coated with artificial colours and sweeteners.

So all of my life, while I have naively thought I was chewing chicle with flavours and sweeteners added, I was actually chewing a form of plastic.
Let's just say that I spent 15 years of my life working in a plastic factory, and would never have dreamed of putting that stuff in my mouth, no matter how pretty the colour was.

-And incidently, I wonder how old that documentary about chewing gum actually was that I saw on TV when I was a kid? Clearly it was already outdated information and no longer true, for it was 1958 or 1959 before my parents were able to buy our first TV set, and by then the artificial stuff was in use. I'm pretty sure I was 9 or 10 at the time I watched that outdated film about chewing gum, so the darn thing was upwards of 30 years old, as this would have been 1962 or 63 when I saw it on TV.

But it turns out that chicle is still being produced. So if you want to "go green" and chew the real thing instead of a hunk of plastic, you can.

Below are the links for the Chicza chewing gum company's American and Canadian websites. Don't worry European members. I saw in the program that the Chicza company also ships to the UK. So you should be able to buy the real thing over there if you want it. I did a quick Google and found a few places in the UK that sell the product.

The Chicza company claims to be operating sustainably, so that's good news too. Please use the American website for more information.
(The Canadian website is mostly just about ordering product, since they are a small company that has obtained the distribution rights here.)

USA: http://www.chiczausa.com/

Canada http://www.chiczagum.ca/home/

[Dr.Flay]

I expect it will be available in health food stores and hippy shops.

Unfortunately fake food is a bigger problem once you realise that things like milk are often man-made.

A friend of mine that worked in a dairy told me about the deconstruction of milk.
Since we started splitting milk to remove the fat (now known to be a healthy), we took it even further.
Large dairies often remove all the fats and proteins ("Standardised") and often sell into the catering industry as Lactose and other food enhancers.
(You may think you are avoiding milk fat in skimmed milk, but it has to go somewhere).
What you have left gets sugar and vegetable oil added. It is then "Homogenised" so it does not split.

Check yourself, does your usual milk look pure white or slightly yellow ?
If it is off-white then they put the real milkfat back in it, but if it is as white as your fridge door, then it is made with sugar and vegetable oil.

[a nameless entity]

Why am I not surprised that even milk has been compromised? -I am so going to read the ingredients list on a milk bag to see if that sort of thing is going on here. Any mention of sugars and I'll know at once.

By the way, I just saw a nutritionist talking on TV earlier this month. She was saying that reducing your fat intake has only been assumed to be good for you all these years. There was never any proper study done to prove that drinking 1% milk was healthier than consuming 2% or 3% for instance. And now that they are looking into it, it seems that it makes no difference to your health if you eat the regular fat content foodstuff as opposed to the fat reduced version. Fats also appear to have very little to do with weight gain.

From this I would conclude that it is actually healthier to eat the naturally fattier item. Because the food industry adds sugar and emulsifiers and god knows what else to the foodstuff to give it back taste and creaminess.
And since the latest news is pointing more and more towards sugar as the real health wrecker out there, I feel more strongly than ever that one should eat the more natural fat level product. It seems that sugars are more responsible for weight gain than fats also, as it happens. Let alone all the other problems it is known to cause. And because sugar is being added to almost everything these days, it's very hard to avoid.

[a nameless entity]

I bought a box of 10 packets of gum from the Chicza distributor here in Canada. After HST was added the price was $50.85. Shipping was free, so that works out to $5.09 a pack. It's probably a fair bit cheaper in the USA. I haven't looked (yet).

There are 12 squares of gum per pack. So each piece costs just under 43 cents.

I say squares of gum, because the gum comes in a foil wrapper that fits into a stiff paper packet, and the gum itself is sold as a rectangular sheet. The sheet of gum is scored into 12 squares. Each packet contains 30 grams of gum. So to chew a piece of gum you tear it off of the rectangular sheet.

The gum is not as soft and chewy as the plastic stuff. Freshness may play a role here. One packet of gum was quite stiff, and the product may have been past its best before date. Other packets were fresher and softer. This gum starts out okay, but does not stay soft like the plastic gums. It stiffens and becomes less enjoyable over time. For most users this won't be a problem, but if you like to chew a piece of gum for a very long time, you will be disappointed.

Taste:
My order did not include the flavour "Wild Berry".

The spearmint and mint flavours were very vague and disappointing. These need work. -A lot of work.

The Lime flavour is ... okay....... rather sweet, and its taste lasts a good while, but does fade away eventually.

The cinnamon flavour is the clear winner. It tastes as it should, and the flavour lasts as long as the gum's chewyness does. This is the only flavour I would buy again. At least until I hear that they've improved the others.

So, if you don't want to buy plastic and poison yourself with the pvc emulsifiers and other nasty ingredients in modern gum, and don't mind the expense, try the Cinnamon flavour of Chicza gum. But only buy it one pack at a time, from a health food store that has a lot of stock turnover so that you stand the best chance of getting a fresh wafer of "real" gum.