The green, the red, and the yellow wrappings cover the first packages of chewing gum purchased in at least 10 years. Now if I can just remember where I put them. That's very important because this is a test.
It's my own personal evaluation, in the privacy of my own home and wherever I roam to determine if chewing gum will improve the memory. The jury is still out on the scientific studies that have been conducted, but there is enough data to pique my interest.
Goodness knows, ginkgo, promoted as inducing circulation to the brain, didn't work, so why not go for gum chewing? It's a lot cheaper, but it also can be messy and annoying to others if you are chomping away during conversation. And what is more maddening than to step on gum on the sidewalk, or more unappetizing than to feel gum under the table in a restaurant? Yuck.
Reports of tests in Japan and Great Britain are intriguing. In 2000 Japanese researchers showed that brain activity in the hippocampus, an area important for memory, increases while people chew. Two years later both the short term and long term memories of 75 adult gum chewers scored higher than those people not chewing in tests conducted by British psychologists.
"These results provide the first evidence that chewing gum can improve the long term and working memory," Andrew Scholey of the University of Northumbria in Newcastle, England said, in the report published in the NewScientist magazine.
There is also the notion that the chewing delivers oxygen to the brain and could boost learning ability. That could bring chewing gum back into the classroom, which has been a no-no as long as I can remember. I can still hear the seventh-grade teacher standing over a student with her hand cupped under his chin and screaming, "Spit out the gum."
A dental school seems to be an unlikely place to experiment with gum chewing, but one study took place at New York University College of Dentistry. Only 56 students took part, but like the equally small study in Great Britain, the chewers attained higher grades.
Thomas Adams, a New York inventor, developed chewing gum, as we know it today, in 1845.
Through history, people have been known for chewing on something, including thickened resin and latex from trees, but we have to thank the Mexican General Antonio Santa Anna for giving Adams the main ingredient.
When the general, exiled from Mexico, came to New York, he boarded with Adams and introduced him to chicle, which Mexican men chewed. After trying to make everything from toys to rain boots with the latex, Adams chewed on a piece of chicle and voila! chewing gum was invented.
Bubble gum is also an American invention that happened by accident. Credit goes to Walter Diemer, an accountant of a Philadelphia chewing gum factory who liked to experiment with formulas. History records Diemer as saying in 1928 that he ended up with something with bubbles.
When a five-pound portion of the "bubbly" stuff sold in a grocery store, the company knew it was a winner. It was named Dubble Bubble. Later Bazooka was a popular brand. And why is most bubble gum pink? Because that's the only food coloring Mr. Diemer had.
Breast enhancement is another benefit claimed for gum chewing. Bust-Up is a Japanese product that contains an extract from an underground tuber with chemicals that mimic the effects of the female sex hormone estrogen. Chewing it three or four times a day is said to increase breast size.
So be it. I am chewing for memory improvement, not body enhancement. My pack a day test will contribute to the annual $2 billion sales, excluding bubble gum, in the United States.
And to, my dentist, here's an FYI. The test gum is sugarless; not flavorful, but sugarless.
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First Published July 21, 2005, 7:37 a.m.