Should we chew gum?

During high school, my best friend started to chew gum during class in order to eat less in breaks. Well, I never found out if what she was doing actually worked or not. However, she believed that with exercise and skipping some meals she will loose weight faster. I noticed that in a couple of months she did not loose weight, but I was intrigued about the effects of chewing gum and why do people think of it as a solution to overweight. So the question is, is chewing gum an effective method to loose appetite?

Does gum make people loose their appetite? Reverse causation needs to be eliminated due to the time factor. What I mean by this, is that the hypothesis could not be tested because time needs to pass in order to notice whether chewing gum has an effect on hunger or not. Furthermore, is there a third variable that influences both gum intake and food intake? But there is always a possibility that it is due to chance as well.

I decided to do some research about the effects of gum and found out two studies conducted by the University of Buffalo. According to one of the studies, chewing gum affects the intake of food. The experiment conducted consisted in participants from the age of 18 to 50. Within these range there were 24 men and 30 women who were randomly chosen to be in either a non chewer or chewer group. This experiment was held during a two week period. The gum chewing group was given either Nutratrim gum (fruit) and Eclipse gum (mint). They were given a pill box to put the gums they chewed and a handbook that contained eating habits questionnaires to record what they ate. Results were given not by a specific gender but by the types of gum each individual ate or not. According to researchers men and women had a very similar reaction when it came to hunger, so they decided to disregard gender. I believe that scientists were right in basing their results on the different types of gum and not take gender into account since gender appears to be a factor that does not alter the results in any possible way.

The experiment had a control group, the no gum individuals, and two arms of study that were either fruit gum chewers or mint gum chewers. During two weeks there were two checkins, in which researchers held the data of the questionnaires and the weight of the participants. The results are demonstrated in the three figures below. Clearly there is a correlation between gum and appetite. There was a significant effect that indicated that neither fruit nor mint gum made people eat less, but the no gum control group demonstrated a more accurate nutrition. The food in their meals was more balanced than those who chewed gum (as you can see in Figure C). Furthermore, researchers did not find a major weight loss in the participants who chewed gum. But did find that the nutrition of an individual who chews gum frequently is very different from that of person who doesn’t. Also, the study was a random trial, since they had people from diverse races, gender, marital status, income, and education. However, they did control confounding variables through a survey that determined the participants eligibility. These variables were health, diet and prior chewing gum habits. Furthermore, the probability of chance for Figure C was 0.05, which indicates that it is very unlikely that the results are due to chance, meaning that chewing gum actually affects the nutrition of a person.



I decided to look more into it and found a study by the Ohio State University. The Atlantic mentions how a group of 44 participants in the study were told to choose between fruit or chocolate after a 45 minute period of time chewing gum. The participants that had chewed on mint gum were less likely to eat fruit than the ones who chewed fruit gum, but still all participants felt hungry after chewing. The results indicated that people who chew gum will later crave for unhealthy food that will influence on them to make unhealthy choices in their diet.

In my opinion chewing gum could indicate an unhealthy lifestyle. However, since many people chew gum it would be life changing to conclude that it is unhealthy. Therefore, replication of the study and meta analyses is needed. The experiment proves that there is not a meaningful change in the amount of calories consumed by an individual but the nutrition of a person does. So the conclusion would be a false positive, the hypothesis was rejected but there is definitely something going on. So the myth that eating more gum causes weight loss is not true. As said in class the lack of science affects the life and health of many people. There are alternate ways to loose weight that are certainly more effective than relying on gum since it actually makes the diet of a person become weaker and lack of nutrients. Here is an article from TIME Magazine that explains why some methods work better than others, and how fat cells react when a person stops eating regularly. Actually, strict diets will make cells have a drastic reaction and will make your body store calories that will later become fat. Exercise and nutritious meals are the best way in which a man or woman can stay in shape.





6 thoughts on “Should we chew gum?

  1. Pengji Wei

    Hello Bernarda. Great topic. Because in recent years, there are more and more people chewing gum while they are walking or studying. Some people thinks that chewing gum can help them reduce the stress and some people think chewing gum might helps them reduce their weight. But the fact is that chewing gum can reduce the stress of a person, but it can not help people deduce the weight, like you said in the blog. And according to the research, chewing gum are not only can’t reduce the weight but also might cause people get cancer. Because all the gums we bought contain the artificial sweeteners, and it’s bad for people’s healthy. Also in the blog, I really liked you put those three chart in, it makes blog mire understandable. And here is a link to explain why chewing gum can help people reduce the stress.

  2. Taylor Rodrigues

    This article was very interesting to me because my family tends to chew a lot of gum because they believe that it will help with their smoking addictions, however we all know it most likely won’t. After reading this post I also wonder, what happens when one swallows the gum? Does it stay in your stomach for 7 years like everybody says? Is it true that one’s body cannot digest it? This article online, states that the gum is so “rubbery” that even the harsh acids within our stomachs cannot digest it and it is hard to break down. It stated how it does not stay in the stomach for 7 years but it will only for a couple of days! So for all you excessive gum chewers out not worry about accidentally swallowing the gum!

    1. Bernarda Jarrin Alvear Post author

      I also did some research about swallowing gum, as you said it will take some days for you to digest it but in the end you will end up doing it. I was intrigued by what you commented about how your family chews a lot of gum to help them with their smoking. I found a study that suggests that there is a correlation with chewing gum and not being nicotine dependent. This study is a randomized control trial that tests nicotine withdrawal. Participants who chewed gum had much stronger results than the ones from the control group who had no gum, so you can tell your family that there will be positive effects if they chew gum in order to leave their addiction. However, as I mentioned in the post it may affect their nutrition.

  3. Audra Wren Laskey

    I thought this was a great topic, since I had never heard tell of this theory. I thought how the results varied through experiments was very interesting. One myth I had heard about with chewing gum, is that it could reduce the urge to smoke for smokers trying to quit. I found a study that measured this and the results are very similar to yours, that the gum is more used as a stress reliever, only managing the symptoms of not smoking

  4. Christopher Ronkainen

    I found this topic very interesting because I had never heard of the idea that gum could effect your diet. I traditionally always heard about it’s effects on testing and studying. Either way, with no prior knowledge on the subject I found the results quite interesting! When doing my own research I found an article that suggests an answer different than yours. It suggests that those that chewed gum in their experiment ate on average 68 less calories at lunch, very minor if you ask me, but I think you’d find the article interesting!

  5. Zihan Wang

    Hi, Bernarda Jarrin Alvear. You did well in data found and it’s true that someone try to chew gum to lose weight. In my prior thought, chew gum can make hungry people don’t feel hungry anymore and lose appetites even though they don’t eat a meal. You give me a direct conclusion that chewing gum is useless for losing weight and it’s an unhealthy lifestyle. The charts are given let me know there is no positive effect of chewing gum. On the contrary, this action will affect people’s nutrition negatively, and the numbers are specifically given reinforce my view that I won’t chose to chew gum. Here is a video for this topic

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