Chewing Gum : Healthy or Not? (Brilliant Biology Experiments)

You will need:

1. 9 slices of apple
2. 9 volunteers
3. 9 chewing gums :
4. fruit-flavoured
5. mint-flavoured
6. cinnamon-flavoured
7. Pen and paper
8. Ear buds/cotton swabs
9. Preparation of agar or jelly in petri dish
10. Labels, water, clock

It is time to decide whether chewing gum is healthy or not once and for all by this simple experiment.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Ask each of 9 volunteers to take a sip of water and hand them each a slice of an apple.
2. After they have eaten the slices, hand each of 3 volunteers a mint gum, 3 the cinnamon gum and 3 the fruit gum.
3. Make them chew the gums for 5 minutes.
4. Using a cotton swab, swab each person’s lower gum in the same place for 5 times.
5. Smear each cotton swab on a fresh jelly/agar preparation.
6. 3 dishes should be labelled ‘mint’, 3 labelled ‘cinnamon’ and 3 ‘fruit’.
7. Leave the dishes overnight in a slightly humid dark place.
8. Observe the bacterial growth the next day.

RESULT

While the fruit gum swabs will have the most bacterial growth, mint will have lesser and cinnamon swabs will have even lesser. The reason is the varying degree of sugar-content in each gum which increases the growth of germs and bacteria. Fruit gums have the highest sugar-content, followed by mint and lastly cinnamon, which is considered most effective.