Eco gum is good. But does it pass the taste test?
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The UK consumes four billion pieces of gum a year. The annual global figure is 374 billion. According to market research, most people chew to freshen their breath but some use gum to suppress appetite, aid concentration and relieve stress. It may also assist in mewing – a method of strengthening one’s jawline that’s popular on social media – though scientific evidence is scant.
After cigarette butts, gum is the second most littered item on the planet. The annual clean-up cost for councils in the UK is around £7mn. Keep Britain Tidy estimates that 77 per cent of England’s streets and 99 per cent of retail sites are stained with gum. Most also contain plastic, which is non-biodegradable. This is bad for the planet but potentially also our wellbeing. According to a research paper from Queen’s University Belfast, a single piece of conventional gum can release more than 250,000 microplastics and detectable levels of nano-plastics into our bodies, which could have health implications. The speed of nano-plastic release prompted one of the paper’s researchers to conclude: “There may not be any safe chewing duration.”
Such concerns have contributed to the rise of plastic-free chewing gum, which is typically made from acacia gum or chicle (a natural tree sap). Though niche in the total $18.49bn chewing gum market, the plastic-free sector is projected to grow to $242mn by 2031.
Caron Proschan, founder of Simply Gum, which launched in the US in 2014 and bills itself as the “first and original plastic-free gum”, thinks we are at a turning point. “There are a lot of tailwinds in the US in terms of microplastics, general plastic awareness and healthy eating [in part driven by] the Make America Healthy Again movement,” she says. “Our own surveys show when consumers know option A has plastic and option B does not, they choose option B.”
Capitalising on that comparison is one reason Tom Raviv, founder of UK-based Milliways, which launched in 2021, wants plastic-free gum on shelves next to plastic-based gum at checkouts. “In-store placement is critical,” he says. “Gum is one of the biggest impulse buys.”
Nuud, another UK brand, has just partnered with Kids Against Plastic on a campaign to raise awareness. “Poisoned by Plastic” calls for mandatory labelling of plastic ingredients, age restrictions, health warnings and an eventual UK ban. “Chewing gum is the only food product that contains vast quantities of plastic as an integral ingredient,” says Nuud founder Keir Carnie. “Given that 50 per cent of UK chewers are aged under 25 and plastic gum is marketed as good for young people’s health, these restrictions make sense.”
But how does plastic-free gum measure up? I tried five brands: Oh My Gum!, Simply Gum, Underbrush, Nuud and Milliways. As an occasional chewer of conventional gum, my expectations weren’t always met. Some lost their flavour too soon. Others got stuck on my teeth. Nuud looked a lot closer to regular gum than the others.
“For health-conscious consumers who just want to freshen their breath, a [plastic-free] chewing gum with a shorter flavour span is a trade-off they’re happy to make,” says Oh My Gum! founder Malak Ben-Hmeda. Among its four flavours including mint, cherry and tropical, cinnamon was my preferred option. Milliways’ mighty mint, spearmint and peppermint were instant sinus clearers, though the chewing pleasure was short-lived. Underbrush, which pitches itself as a “remineralising” gum with plaque-reducing benefits, was stiff and brittle at first but eventually delivered a durable chew that made sense of the recommendation to masticate for “an hour or more”.
My favourites were Simply Gum’s, which looked like cat litter pellets and could be tough to start but softened into a big elastic chew. Peppermint was pleasant but best was ginger, which lent a breath-sweetening rather than freshening effect.
“If you want to effect mass change,” says Carnie, “you need to convert the mass-market consumer with a product that looks, tastes and chews like regular gum.” True, but perhaps there’s value in something different too.
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