You don't really see people chewing gum anymore.

This seems like a case of "I don't see it, so others don't either"

Been thinking on this lately and I get OP. People used to chew gun in the 80's and 90's, a lot. Now it would be weird to see someone doing so.
- It was weird to see people chew guns then too its an accident waiting to happen.

Do you want to see me chewing gum? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I can never see that face the same again ever since I was in a 9 month relationship with a girl whose snapchat name was the lenny face and eventually I forgot her name, was too embarrassed to ask her to remind me (because it had been like four months), so I spent the next ~5 months of my life with a psychoromantic connection to that fucking emoticon.
- I forgot her name, was too embarrassed to ask her to remind me (because it had been like four months), so I spent the next ~5 months of my life with a psychoromantic connection to that fucking emoticon.
  
  That's hilarious. What a time to be alive
- Are you a living episode of Seinfeld? This sounds like a scenario George Costanza would get himself into.
- Did you ever figure out her name? I hope it was Linda.

Don’t see ads for it anymore either. I kinda miss the old “how it feels to chew 5 gum” ones

I smoked one of my buddies out on DMT and when he came back to reality I said "that's how it feels to chew 5 gum" and it was pretty funny.
I hope i'll never get as far as missing a commercial
- Right?
The (very old) Jucyfruit jingle will always and forever be burned into my memory.
- Juicy fruit is gonna move ya
Its really interesting how wirgleys fucked up the marketing on that one even though they had something great out of the gate

I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum.

Not only is the plastic gross, but the artificial sweeteners are nasty.
Some of us don't taste sweetness, we taste the chemical.
Gum stopped being fun.

Sweet gum is gross, minty gum is nice though
Actually I think you stopped being fun
- You're only saying that because you're mad I won't do that kinky stuff with you.

Doesn't help anything that most "gum base" has PLASTIC in it.

Yea I loved gum right up until the recent study clearly linking microplastics in the body and chewing gum.
- Really? I am not entirely surprised but did the study say how the plastic was getting in there?
Yeah the microplastics in gum thing really threw me off when I found out about it.
Well your bowl of ice cream has carbon in it. Does it matter? No
- You'd probably mind if your ice cream had lead in it. Microplastics will be the lead poisoning of the new century. They're carcinogens and endocrine disruptors and we don't even know the full extent of the effects they have.
- A good chunk of the atoms in our bodies are carbon, yet we don't see plastic being naturally created on our bodies, now do we?

I chew gum every day.

So do I, for the Xylitol to keep my teeth healthy.

Hard to find decent gum now as many switched to Sorbitol as it's cheaper but not as good for teeth.
- Personally, I really like the gum from Pür.
same

I chew gum

I can't see you. The theory checks out.
I chew gum, too, I just do it in private where no one can see, like any other decent human being.
- Not me, I'm a fucking degenerate.

I feel like the consumption of gum has shifted from just chewing it to being a more glorified mint/on the go way to brush your teeth.

Well, it's in their mouth, duh.

Well I guess when there's a species of giant people eating gum-chewers we really should have expected a decline in its popularity
- On today's episode of: Is This Somebody's Fetish or Just an Anime I Haven't Watched Yet
- Wait - if the ones who chew gum are also the ones who eat people, shouldn't we see MORE gum chewers, since they'd be a proportionally larger part of the population the more they eat?
So, actually what's happened is people have stopped blowing bubbles.

I got offered some gum on the a plane ride the other day and it really made me to stop and think how I went from doing that every time to not doing it for years.

I smoked for about 10 years and replaced that with vaping. Then I replaced vaping with chewing gum in January.

I chew 2 pieces of Extra 6-7 times a day and Blockheads multivitamin gum twice a day.

I also carry strips of foil I can spit into if I'm at my desk or not near a bin.

I bet you could crack open a jawbreaker with one bite with those jaw muscles.

That's interesting though, have you noticed any changes from that amount of gum?
- No, but it's only been a couple of months.
  
  Plus I'm single right now, if you catch my drift.
I went to school with a girl who chewed gum everyday, she ended up in hospital with a stomach ulcer.

When you chew, your brain sends signals to your stomach to produce acid to break down the food that is incoming, but if you don't actually consume food, the acid will just continually build until there's a problem.

Basically just saying be careful, though I'm not sure if there is any warning signs you can watch for.
Nice

They're probably vaping instead.

Why is all made with fake sugar now. That shit hurts my stomach

Sugar alcohol isn't digested by bacteria on your teeth, preventing cavity growth from it, but it's a laxative
- Damn that's why they do this?? TiL thanks buddy
You can still buy the stuff with sugar. Just buy the ones for kids.

It's me. I'm singlehandedly keeping the gum industry alive.

You don't know what I see and don't see. How dare you.

Im not big on chewing literal microplastics… I used to love chewing gum before I learned that though

Oh my! I thought it was made from some kind of tree sap! Apparently those do exist, but all of the ones you find in stores are platic based!
- What. The. Fuck.
I mean I'm 100% not above chewing literal plastic if I'm bored enough.
- I'd actually prefer to chew plastic over gum. Not that I do, but I would.
I've got bad news, dude... Micro plastics are in everything.

I see it occasionally. I wonder if it dropped in popularity when cigarettes did. And everyone has their heads up their phones. So they are less observant of what's going on around them, and maybe there's less demand for walking-around-diversions like gum.

So this is far from scientific, but I was at a shopping center I used to go to a lot as a kid recently and I noticed that the sidewalks were free of gum. As a kid I remember it always being covered in discharged gum, i used to talk about it with my mom, the sidewalk was practically polka-dotted back then.

Of course there's a lot of possible explanations besides people just not chewing gum anymore. Could be that people have gotten better about disposing of gum properly, newer gum formulations could be easier to clean up, or we've gotten better at it how we clean it, or there's the fact that teenagers used to just kind of hang around outside of stores and don't/can't really do that so much anymore so there's less people loitering around and spitting their gum out.

All out. Time to kick ass.

I'm gonna rip off your head and shit down your neck.

If I see a balding, shorter guy with a buzz cut and a tan line on his face from his wrap around sunglasses, I expect him to be chewing gum.

I have a coworker who does. Into her mic during meetings. I hate her way more than I otherwise would because of that

People chewed gum to fix their breath after smoking tobacco, and I don't see people doing that anymore either.

The ads never said that gum was for smokers, but it's for smokers.

Oh no, they absolutely did say that.

I distinctly remember commercials that said, “you can’t smoke at work, so you need such and such gum”.

That’s for a different reason, but it was tied to smoking at least.

My bjj instructor rolls with gum in his mouth lol. I don't chew it because I have a pathological need to swallow it.

My bjj instructor rolls with gum in his mouth lol. I don't chew it because I have a pathological need to swallow it.

I missed the second ‘j’ at my initial glance at this comment, and changing this from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to “BJ instructor” makes the comment far more interesting.
- I mean, I always read it as "blow job job" anyway so it makes no odds to me either way
Does he not roll with a mouth-guard? If he does, the idea of someone chewing gum with one of those in is priceless.
- Nah its when he's leading class and demoing techniques

I know they must be though because I find used gum stuck to shit all the time.

I see people in this thread complaining about fake sugar and someone mentioned chewing gum with real sugar. I'm just wondering do they sell xylitol gum in America? I see no point in chewing gum if it's not even healthy for teeth.

Yes they make them here with xylitol. Those are the ones I buy.
Yes, usually they're some sugar alcohol. Only traditional style chewing gums will use sugar.
Oh no. Gum is super not healthy for your teeth in the US.
- Wrong, most gum in the US uses sugar alcohols

I don't want to willingly keep eating micro plastics.

Good idea, macro plastics are where it's at. Chow down on that Tupperware.
- I'm sorry but I'm not laughing about this. Microplastics are virtually everywhere and it's incredibly worrying.
  
  https://hsc.unm.edu/news/2024/02/hsc-newsroom-post-microplastics.html
Lots of gum (in the UK anyway) doesn't contain plastic now.
Huh, TIL they're poly vinyl acetate plastic in chewing gum.

I see it pretty much all the time. You probably live somewhere where people are more likely to do stuff other than chewing gum, or, in the worst case scenario, somewhere where it's literally illegal (ie Singapore).

I would have agreed with you re: reduction in gum chewers. But it looks like most forecasting documents and historical trends demonstrate growth in consumption. Granted I've only had a quick lookm https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/global-chewing-gum-market

I was never down with gum to start. Chewing something until its flavorless and then spitting it out is just a strict downgrade from snacking.

The pro is no calories. The problem is if I'm not chewing gum I'll chew my lip, or eat or drink something

That's because gum has less flavor and is unreasonably more expensive, at least in my case.

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Chewing gum is great for you

Gum always gives me a headache. Though I think I have mild TMJ.

It makes me angry for some reason. Like, maybe there’s this primitive thing in me that says, “SWALLOW YOUR FOOD, APE!” but it’s not for swallowing. I know that, my brain don’t, so it say, “GET ANGRY, APE!”

Was watching a Steve Ramsey video on YouTube today and noticed he was chewing gum through parts of it. Made me think of this post again. You definitely don't see a lot of YouTubers chewing gum!

People still chewing gum, but chewing gum is no longer a fashion trend. So they don't purposely show to you that they are chewing gum.

I do chewing gum when at work, to help me stay focused. I don't chewing gum while hanging out with friends to look cool, because it no longer a trend. Beside, it is not comfortable to speak while chewing gum.

I keep some sugar-free mint gum in my carry-on bag to chew during take-off and landing to help with ear pressure. But otherwise I’ve largely turned to Binaca or Listerine spray for breath freshening, which for me is the major purpose of gum.

The other major purpose is the blowing of bubbles