Are there any known health risks from chewing gum (aside from the risk of accidentally swallowing it)?
• There are very real health risks associated with chewing gum and they are related to excess stomach acid. The action of chewing stimulates the cells lining the stomach wall to produce digestive (hydrochloric) acid. This is a natural mechanism to ensure that when the food that is being chewed reaches the stomach, there is some acid in there to begin the digestion process. When you chew gum, this same mechanism comes into effect and acid is secreted into the stomach, only this time there is no food being swallowed to be digested. This leads to a build of unneccesary acid in the stomach which will effectively just slosh around in there. This is bad news as the more acid simply sitting in your stomach, the greater the chance of developing stomach ulcers and the like. Fortunately, the risk is not very great unless you chew A lot of gum so don’t worry, unless you are a football coach. George Stammers, University of Reading • When you chew gum it produces an excess of useless saliva in your
