chewing gum

[sassy6666]

why does chewing gum not breakup like normal food when chewed?

[spacechimp]

I believe because it has a latex base of some description. I'm not expert though.

[spacechimp]

this may help http://www.snopes.com/oldwives/chewgum.asp . if the link doesn't work check there's not </p> after the address in the address bar.

[JustSia]

The chewy bit in the chewing gum is a mixture of several kinds of polymers, which are designed to be insoluble. Rubber, cellulose, latex, plastics are all different types of polymers. Can you think of a simple molecule? Now imagine millions and more of these molecules joint together. These huge chains can be chemically manipulated to have different chemical and physical properties, like iviscosity, bond strengths, reactivity, melting points etc.

The gum base reacts very slowly with stomach acid, hence a really long digestion time never enough to significantly change its composition before it is actually excreted by the body. It would generally take a good few weeks to break up the gum by HCl (stomach acid) But as you know only a couple of days if not less for the body to excrete the foods that are not digestible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum

S.