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Chew on This

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By: Sean Moloughney

Editor, Nutraceuticals World

Soon, gums may offer more than just tongue-tingling tastes and tooth-brightening properties. Scientists are probing for evidence that habitual chewing can make us healthier and more alert, not to mention thinner and better at remembering names. Companies are experimenting with added ingredients that, they hope, will give gums power to suppress appetite, cure headaches, fight cancer, ward off cavities, you name it. The research is still in the early stages, but gums containing green tea, phytoestrogens and calcium are already available in Europe and Asia. In the United States, where according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average American chews 1.8 pounds of gum a year, gums with added health-boosting ingredients are seen by food trend watchers as an obvious next step in the expansion of the category of candy, beverages and snacks containing herbs, minerals and other supplements.

Scientists are also looking at gum as a good alternative to pills, patches and syrups for getting prescription medicines into our bodies…Still gum experts say that many questions remain with using gum to deliver drugs or nutrients. Gum can contain as many as 70 ingredients, they note, and variations allow for thousands of possible gum base formulations. Interactions among ingredients can change their effectiveness—and scientists haven’t figured out how much of a drug or nutrient a stick of gum can hold or whether any given substance will be released or absorbed by the body when chewed.

—Emily Sohn, LAtimes.com, 2/19/07

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