Does Gum Really Take 7 Years to Digest?

Does Gum Really Take 7 Years to Digest?

Maybe you couldn't find a nearby trashcan, or perhaps you were enjoying the taste just a little too much. Whatever the case, you did what most of us have done at one point or another: You swallowed your chewing gum. It's only then that a refrain from childhood echoes through your mind: "Don't swallow chewing gum—it will stay in your system for seven years!"

Thankfully the legend is false. As gastroenterologist Dr. Rodger Liddle of the Duke University School of Medicine explained to Scientific American: "Nothing would reside that long unless it was so large it couldn't get out of the stomach or it was trapped in the intestine."

Chewing gum consists of a gum base, sweetener, flavoring, preservatives and softeners. Sugars and flavoring ingredients such as mint oils break down easily and are soon excreted. Likewise, softeners such as vegetable oil or glycerine don’t present a problem for the digestive system. The ingredient that can withstand both the acid in the stomach and the digestive enzymes in the intestines is the gum base.

But even though the gum base cannot be broken down, that doesn’t mean it stays in your gut for seven years. Nor does it wind itself around your heart, as some also assert. Provided it’s a small piece, it does eventually find its way down and out of the digestive tract.

However, this doesn't mean you should start swallowing your chewing gum regularly — in several reported cases, doctors had to remove taffy-like wads of gum from children's bowels. Swallowing a lot of chewing gum in a relatively short amount of time, it seems, can cause the pieces to accumulate and stuff up the digestive tract, causing constipation.

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