Category Kids Queries

Mom warned you that gum doesn’t digest; it just sits in your stomach soaking in a stew of digestive and taking up space. Acids and enzymes in your stomach make short work of gum’s sugars and flavor additives, but its synthetic-rubber base is one tough glob to digest. That doesn’t mean gum just swirls around and around in your belly like a penny in a washing machine. Like clockwork, your stomach empties its contents into the intestine for further digestion. Any gum gobs, corn kernels, or other tough-to-digest treats go along for the ride. It all gets pushed to the colon and passed in your poop, looking much as it did when you ate it. Not that we suggest you go looking.

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Chewing gum is a funny kind of food – the only kind you’re allowed to play with. Go ahead and chew it, snap it, and blow it into bubbles, but whatever you do, don’t swallow it. Gum’s rubbery properties are a product of its ingredients, including synthetic rubber and softeners that keep it from turning into a chalky block in your mouth. Synthetic rubber? Softeners? Yummy! Or not, which is why gum makers add “flavorings” – the closest thing to food in the ingredients list. And like food, these sweeteners mix with saliva in your mouth and sink to your stomach each time you swallow. Eventually, all the sweeteners head south, leaving you with a flavorless lump of softened rubber to spit into the nearest trash can.

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Sugar is made of molecules of sucrose, a compound held together by relatively weak bonds. When the sucrose molecules mix with water, the water molecules surround and break the bonds holding together the sugar molecule. Th sugar is still in the water, of course (which is why the water tastes sweet), but now it’s dissolved into the new sugar-and-water mix, called a “solution.” Hot water dissolves sugar more quickly – and can hold more of it – because the heat spreads its molecules farther apart, making room for more sucrose.

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When a candy maker and a dentist teamed up to invent a new kind of treat in 1899, they dubbed it “fairy floss” for a reason: As soon as their fluffy confection hit the mouth, it seemed to magically disappear like a fairy in the forest. Thirty years later, fairy floss became known by its more popular name, cotton candy, but its magical properties remained. The secret lies in the recipe. Cotton candy is made of sugar heated – or caramelized – in a special machine, colored by food coloring, and spun at high speeds into thin strands. Despite its fluffy appearance, cotton candy is still basically sugar. And like sugar, it dissolves in water – in this case, the saliva in your mouth.

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For the same reason bagels have holes – so they’re not a gooey mess inside. Although doughnuts and bagels are cooked in different ways (fried and baked, respectively), both are dense with dough when they’re solid disk. To help them cook evenly all the way through, bakers punch out the middles. The holes also helped bakers display doughnuts on sticks when they were introduced in the late 1800s.

Donuts became popular in America around the same time bagels were becoming popular. Bakers and street vendors would often sell bagels stacked on long sticks or strung on a long rope. Some people believe that the holes in donuts allowed them to be sold in a similar way. Many people believe that those pieces of cut-out dough are what are used to make donut holes, which are those little round donut pieces that so many kids love to eat with milk.

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(1) Don’t guzzle water! Although a splash of icy H2O might provide momentary relief, it will only scatter the scorching capsaicin chemical throughout your mouth, spreading the pain.

(2) Do drink milk, which actually works like a vacuum to slurp the capsaicin from your pain receptors. The colder the milk, the better.

(3) If you don’t have milk, you can eat another dairy product such as cottage cheese, yogurt, or – best of all – ice cream!

(4) Mix a tablespoon of sugar into a glass of water, then swish the water around in your mouth and spit it out. The sugar in the water bonds with the capsaicin, clearing it from your mouth.

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