I often find myself mindlessly having two or three pieces of gum throughout a single school day; this also seemed to be the case for many students at Mead High. This led me to wonder about the point of chewing gum.
I conducted a small survey during the second lunch on an A day showed that 23 out of 40 students also chew two or three pieces of gum daily. More than half of the students interviewed admitted to having this common habit of consuming gum throughout the day.
So, what are the benefits of chewing gum?
According to GlobalEdge, a person has 300 pieces of gum in a year on average — and, wow, that’s a lot of chewing time!
This obsession with gum goes beyond fresh-smelling breath and has become a sensory satisfaction for many. According to the National Library of Medicine, chewing gum can help with stress because of the dampening of senses.
Chewing gum has some other not-so-obvious benefits. For instance, Chewing Gum Facts mentions that if someone is actively chewing gum while peeling an onion, it will keep that said person from crying. This is an incredibly useful hack for those who work with onions daily or even those who need to work with onions and want to avoid the overflow from their tear ducts.
If nothing has convinced you yet of the wonders that chewing gum creates, then you may find it interesting that dentists have started recommending patients to chew sugar-free gum. The Oral Health Foundation discusses the reasoning behind chewing gum. One of the main advantages they mention is that while chewing gum, your body creates more saliva that helps reduce the amount of acid that contributes things like cavities.
While chewing gum could be perceived as a bad habit, it seems incredibly effective in many areas of our health. With this in mind, I know I’ll continue chewing gum and not break this demeaned habit.
