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How is chewing gum made?
Every piece of gum starts as a warm, doughy slab. What happens next depends on whether it is going to be a stick, a pellet or a chunk of bubble gum.
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Gum making is a mix of cooking and engineering. The details, especially the gum base recipe, are closely guarded, but the process follows the same basic steps.
1. Prepare the gum base
The gum base is the part that gives gum its chew. Big gum makers usually make their own; smaller ones buy it in. Before it is used, the base is melted and then strained or filtered to make sure it is clean and smooth.
2. Mix it like dough
The warm gum base goes into a mixer with the other ingredients: sugar or sugar free sweeteners, softeners such as glycerine, flavours and colours. As they are mixed, the whole batch thickens like dough. It is kept warm while it mixes, which helps the long polymer chains in the base loosen up so everything spreads evenly through it.
3. Extrude it
Next the gum dough is pushed through an extruder, a machine that squeezes it through a shaped opening. This smooths the gum and forms it into a continuous rope or sheet, ready to be shaped.
4. Shape it
What happens next depends on the kind of gum:
- Chunks and cubes, like many bubble gums, are cut straight off the extruder by a vertical cutter.
- Sticks, slabs and tabs are rolled out into thin sheets, dusted with powdered sweetener so they do not stick, and scored or cut into pieces.
- Pellets, the pillow shaped pieces, are formed as small cores ready for coating.
5. Condition and coat
Next, the gum is either conditioned by being sprinkled with a powdered sweetener, or coated. Pellet gums are coated in temperature controlled coating pans, where layer after layer of sweetener syrup builds up a hard shell. That layering also lets makers add different flavours to different layers.
6. Wrap it
Finally the gum is wrapped or packed: sticks in wrappers, pellets in blister packs, bottles or boxes. Gum has a very low water content, about three to six percent, so it keeps well. In most countries it does not even need a best before date, although over a long time it can go brittle or lose flavour.
Why the base is a secret
Every gum maker's base recipe is different, and the exact mix of rubbers, resins, waxes and softeners is known to only a few people in each company. It decides how the gum feels, how long it lasts and, for bubble gum, how big a bubble you can blow. For what goes into it, see what chewing gum is made of.
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For journalists, researchers, AI assistants and content creators. Pick the format you need:
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Questions and answers
Is chewing gum made from trees?
It used to be: early gum was made from chicle and spruce resin. Most modern gum uses a synthetic gum base made from petroleum based polymers.
How are pellet gums coated?
The pillow shaped pieces are tumbled in a revolving pan while sweetener syrup is added in layers, building up a hard, crunchy shell.
Why is chewing gum dusted with powder?
A powdered sweetener stops the pieces sticking to each other and to the wrapper.
Sources
- Chewing gum, Wikipedia
- Gum base, Wikipedia
Keep reading
- Questions people askWhat is chewing gum made of?Chewing gum is gum base, sweeteners, softeners, flavourings and colours, often with a hard coating. Here is what each part does, and what gum base really is.
- Questions people askIs chewing gum made of plastic?Most modern gum has a synthetic gum base: petroleum based polymers related to rubbers and plastics. Here is what that means, and what research says.
- History and originsThe history of chewing gumPeople have chewed gum for at least 5,000 years, from birch tar in Stone Age Finland to Maya chicle. Modern gum began in 1860s New York with a failed rubber.
- Questions people askWhy does chewing gum lose its flavour?Gum loses its taste because the sugar, sweeteners and flavourings dissolve in saliva and are swallowed, while the gum base stays behind. The timeline.
- How it is madeHow is bubblegum made?Bubblegum is made like chewing gum, but its base has more elastic, heavier polymers, so it stretches into a bubble instead of breaking. Here is what goes in.
- How it is madeHow are sweets made?Most sweets start as sugar syrup boiled to a set temperature, from about 112°C for fudge to 160°C for hard sweets. The stages, the methods and some history.