Anne just bought a tin of gum. There is nutritional information on the bottom, which indicates that each serving contains 5 calories. My question: Do you get the 5 calories just from chewing the gum, or do you have to swallow it?
[ANNE SPEAKING]: Me, I only care that the gum is tasty. It’s Dragon Fire cinnamon gum, and comes in a little round, red tin with a dragon on it. Cool. 
January 3rd, 2004 at 3:00 pm - Edit
My guess is that’s how much nutritional value is in the stuff, assuming you eat it
The FDA law probably says that anything you put in your mouth has to be rated for calories/values, which is why there’s labels on spring water that are nothing but columns of “O” values
Your tax dollar at work
January 3rd, 2004 at 5:32 pm - Edit
Actually, there are some things people drink that the government expressly *prohibits* rating nutritionally, e.g. alcohol. As I recall there was a spat in the 90s in which vintners wanted to put nutritional information on bottles of wine and the FDA was blocking them from doing so.
January 4th, 2004 at 8:02 am - Edit
Also worth noting, the EPA holds tap water to stricter standards then the FDA does bottled water, I get a chuckle when I see people buying it by the case under the guise of it being “cleaner” than thier city/well water
January 4th, 2004 at 11:07 am - Edit
That latter does beg the question of whether the FDA or EPA does a better job of enforcing their standards. I suspect there are a lot of places in the country where the tap water doesn’t meet EPA standards.
January 8th, 2004 at 10:02 am - Edit
That’s pretty darn hot gum. Does anyone think it’s hotter than atomic fireballs or do the two have parity?
January 11th, 2004 at 4:39 am - Edit
I rather expect you can get sugar calories from swallowing your saliva while chewing.
January 15th, 2004 at 9:01 pm - Edit
I have a relatively low tolerance for strong cinnamon, and I have to say that Atomic Fireballs are stronger than these. In fact, cinnamon Altoids are virtually intolerable to me.
Considering that gum mainly consists of sugar and flavoring in an inert, gum base, the calories probably all come from the sugar. So chewing it thoroughly would release all the available calories, and does not require swallowing the gum.
March 9th, 2005 at 2:20 pm - Edit
Probably you get the calories from swallowing your saliva, but the calories burned from chewing gum are 11 so you’re ahead of the game.