Chicle: the tree sap that started chewing gum (and an exiled general who helped)

Nobody invented chewing gum. People were chewing tree sap for centuries before anyone sold it in a wrapper. What a few 19th-century Americans invented was the gum business, and one of them only got there because he failed to make rubber.

Here's how it happened.

The Maya and the Aztecs chewed chicle

Chicle is the sap of the sapodilla tree, which grows in the forests of southern Mexico and Central America. Cut the bark and the milky latex runs out. Boil it down and it becomes a firm, chewable gum.

The Maya chewed it. So did the Aztecs, and they had rules about it. According to archaeologist Jennifer P. Mathews, who wrote the book on chicle, the Aztecs considered chewing in public socially unacceptable for adults. Unmarried women could chew in public. Wives were expected to chew only in private. A woman chewing openly in public risked being labeled a harlot, and a man doing it was called effeminate.¹

So if you've ever been told it's rude to chew gum in a meeting, that rule is at least 500 years old.

Meanwhile, in Maine: spruce gum

In New England, people chewed resin from spruce trees. In 1848, John B. Curtis began selling it as "State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum," generally counted as the first commercial chewing gum in the US.² Maine's own Secretary of State describes the original as bitter-tasting, which tells you a lot about how much people wanted something to chew.

The rubber experiment that turned into gum

In the mid-1860s, Antonio López de Santa Anna, the former Mexican president and general (yes, the Alamo one), was living in the US and stayed at the Staten Island home of an inventor named Thomas Adams. Santa Anna had chicle with him.¹

The plan was to turn chicle into a cheaper substitute for rubber. Adams and his son tried, and it didn't work.

Left with a supply of chicle and no use for it, the Adams family tried selling it as chewing gum instead. Around 1869 they launched a product called "Adams' New York Chewing Gum No. 1 – Snapping and Stretching."³ In 1871 Thomas Adams was granted a US patent for gum making.⁴ Chicle went on to replace spruce resin as the base of American gum, and the big gum brands of the early 1900s bought it by the ton.

The Smithsonian, for what it's worth, calls parts of this origin story "murky." Most good origin stories are.

Then the base went synthetic

Demand eventually outran the trees. By the mid-1930s, overharvesting had killed at least a quarter of Mexico's sapodilla trees, and gum makers soon began switching to cheaper synthetic bases.¹ By the middle of the 20th century, most gum was made on a synthetic base.

Most gum still is. The FDA's list of permitted gum-base ingredients includes both: the old tree saps like chicle, and synthetics like polyethylene and polyvinyl acetate.⁵ We walk through that list in what is gum made of.

Why we went back to the trees

We wanted YAWANA SMILE to be gum made the original way: from tree sap. Our base is a proprietary blend of chicle, mastic, spruce, myrrh, and arabic. Chicle and spruce connect our blend to the history in this story; extra fresh peppermint gives SMILE its flavor.

The full ingredient list, as printed on the pouch:

Xylitol, Chicle Base, Gum Arabic, Hydroxyapatite, Rice Flour, Flavor, Spruce Gum, Coconut Oil, Calcium Bentonite Clay, Myrrh Gum, Spirulina, Carnauba Wax.

Myrrh gum is another tree resin with a very long history of its own. That's a story for another day.

Where our chicle comes from

Chicle is one part of our proprietary gum blend. We're gathering documentation from our supplier on where and how that chicle is harvested. When we have it, we'll share the real story here, forest and all.

Questions people ask

What is chicle? The natural latex of the sapodilla tree (Manilkara zapota), boiled down into a chewable gum. It was the standard base for American chewing gum from the late 1800s until synthetic bases took over in the 20th century.

Is chicle gum still made? Yes. A small number of brands, ours included, use chicle in their gum base.

What does spruce gum taste like? On its own, resinous and bitter. In our gum it's a minor ingredient under peppermint, so what you taste is mint.

Who invented chewing gum? No single person. People in the Americas chewed chicle and spruce resin long before anyone sold it. John B. Curtis sold spruce gum commercially in Maine in 1848, and the Adams family started selling chicle gum in New York around 1869.

Chew a little history

We like that the oldest way to make gum is also the easiest to explain: it comes from a tree. That's why we made SMILE with a proprietary blend of chicle, mastic, spruce, myrrh, and arabic, flavored it with extra fresh peppermint and put 60 pieces in a resealable pouch.

If you're curious how the original chew holds up today, SMILE is right here. Your first order comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, no return needed.

Keep reading: What is gum made of? · Every ingredient in our gum, explained

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