THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 15, 1996 TAG: 9606150433
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 48 lines
Wouldn't you know that now, 65 years too late, researchers have discovered it is healthy for you to chew gum.
Chewing gum, preferably sugarless, stimulates saliva production, which, in turn, clears away irritating gastric acids responsible for heartburn.
``We used sugar-free gum because sugar gum has some things in it like carbohydrates, which can give you acid pHs,'' said Dr.Swarnjit Singh, chief researcher at the University of Alabama-Birmingham.
They used Trident sugar-free gum, but any sugar-free gum will do. Think of the difference this discovery would have made in the 1930s.
Back then, mothers, fathers, teachers, Emily Post, Sunday school superintendents, preachers, scoutmasters, school principals and librarians joined in trying to stamp out gum chewing.
And glee club directors - ye gods, don't forget junior high school glee club directors!
If one of them caught you chewing gum and singing, ``Give me ten men who are stout-hearted men, and I'll soon give you ten thousand more,'' you were suspended - not just from school, but by your toes in a dungeon that blue-eyed Miss Scooter visited from time to time to flay you with a nail-tipped bullwhip.
In society's eyes, to chew gum was the great sin.
It shows you how far society has come - or gone - concerned as it is now with drugs, AIDS, car-jacking and fly-by shootings.
Today, during stressful moments, Michael Jordan's jaw works on chewing gum like a riveting gun. Does anybody warn children who sing of wanting ``to be like Mike'' that he is addicted to the deplorable habit of chewing gum?
One day we can look to a gum named for Jordan, and nobody will raise an eyebrow.
I can remember how appalled my father was at the onset of bubble gum and, anew, at double bubble gum. It was as if the world, in the guise of a huge, pink bubble, had exploded in society's face.
``Do you want to chew something that's made of cows' hooves?'' he demanded.
His warning came to mind a few years ago when I learned that some chewing gum is made not of an extract from chicle trees but from plastic. I'd sooner chew on cows' hooves, a natural substance, than plastic any day.
A young colleague, Wendy Grossman, told me that in elementary school anybody caught chewing gum was sentenced to wearing it on the tip of his or her nose the rest of the day.
Thank goodness Miss Scooter didn't think of that. by CNB