Let's face it. Nobody likes to get chewing gum stuck to their clothing, or to their hair or even to their bedpost, despite what the song says. Our friends over at How Stuff Works have an extensive section, in fact, on getting rid of unwanted chewable particulates. And, if you want to see just how long-lasting a piece of gum can be, check out this 5,000-year-old wad from Finland. Talk about ABC gum.
But now comes welcome news from Britain for all of you gum-chewers out there. A company called Revolymer (sexy, no?) has come up with what it calls "a removable confectionary chewing gum." It's now being sold in the United States under the name Rev 7 (slightly sexier, at least for chewing gum).
"We can't call it non-stick," Revolymer Chief Scientific Officer Terry Cosgrove told the BBC, "because you can't create anything that's 100-percent, non-stick." Still, the company says, the polymers that they've developed mean that the resulting gum "can easily be removed from many surfaces with water." Those surfaces include "sidewalks, bricks, carpets, fabric and clothing."
Notice there were no promises about it coming right out of your hair in there. Still Rev 7 does promises to have a "good mouth feel," and the standard long-lasting, fresh minty taste.
Cosgrove says the company made the first ingredient for the gum back in 2003, but it wasn't until a few years later that they figured out how to incorporate it into chewing gum. And why did Revolymer decide to launch it in America?
"The market in America is 300,000 tons of chewing gum a year," Cosgrove says.
Wow. That's a lot of lip-smacking...not to mention sticky sidewalks and desks.
But not to worry. Rev 7 is also degradable. The company says that its tests have shown that the gum will eventually disintegrate into a fine powder after about six months.
Tags: Chemistry, Food, Materials Science, Polymers
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