Sound Bites: Swetha Sivakumar on chewing gum

The year was 1891. Wrigley Jr quickly realised he was in the wrong business and started producing and selling chewing gum full time. The Wrigley company, the one he started, is now owned by Mars Inc and is the world’s largest chewing gum producer. In Singapore, chewing gum has been banned since 1992, simply because it costs a lot of money to clean up the chewed bits of gum that get stuck on streets and at park benches. Regular chewing gum consists of 70% water-soluble ingredients like sweeteners and stabilisers, and 30% of an indigestible water-insoluble “gum base”.