Chewing Gum -- "Remember The Alamo!"

We all undoubtedly have some experience with the topic of today's lesson, that familiar, chewy substance taking on all manner of flavors and shapes. But have you ever stopped to consider what exactly you're chewing? Or it's history? Or what relation it might just have to the Battle of the Alamo and the Texas Revolution? As for what gum is made of, in today's markets you're most likely to be chewing a synthetic form of rubber called polyisobutylene, mixed with sweeteners (sugar or sugar-alcohols such as sorbitol and xylitol) and added flavorings and colorants. Polyisobutylene also happens to be closely related to the same rubber used to make inner tubes and some types of tires.

The chewing substance of choice has not always been quite so synthetic. Since the dawn of time, people have been chewing on leaves and saps of various plants worldwide. Beeswax has been a popular choice even in modern times, often with whole chunks of honeycomb and the contained honey as a natural sweetener. The ancient Greeks chewed the gummy sap of the mastic shrub (Pistacia lentiscus, a member of the pistachio family) on the island of Chios. The popularity of chewing this resin has given rise to the English roots of many chewing words (to masticate is to chew). When colonists first arrived in New England, the Native Americans present introduced them to the chewing the sap of the local spruce trees, which became much a popular use of a by-product of spruce forestry for newspaper pulp. Paraffin wax (the same petroleum-based material most candles were being made of) also held popularity amongst chewing fans.

However, if you were to pop any one of these chewing substances into your mouth today, you would notice a radical difference in texture and consistency from modern gum. The dawn of today's chewing materials is due in part to the infamous Mexican General Santa Ana, of Battle of the Alamo renown, who was at the time sitting in New York in exile. In 1869, Santa Ana introduced inventor Thomas Adams to the sap of the Central American Sapodilla tree (Manilkara chicle) tapped into by cutting zig-zag gashes across the bark---a popular chew of Mexicans. Thomas Adams promptly purchased a great deal of this sap, called Chicle (from the Nahuatl word meaning "sticky stuff"), in hopes of finding a way to create a new form of rubber. After many failed experiments, Adams chewed on a piece of his supply, and immediately soon after opened up the world's first chewing-gum factory.

After noting the popularity of his pure chicle gum, Adams developed a black licorice flavored variety called Blackjack, which also set the stage as the first stick gum (previously gum was sold in chunks). The flavor, however, would not be retained long in the gum--a problem which would be solved six years later with the addition of sugar and corn syrup by William White. Adams later went on to produce Tutti-Frutti, the first gum to be sold by vending machines.

A name that comes to mind when discussing gum is that of William Wrigley, Jr., who started shop as a soap merchant in 1891. As a terrific salesman, Wrigley used an incentive of giving away free baking powder with soap purchases. When baking powder became more popular than the soap, he opened up a baking powder only business, with free sticks of chewing gum alongside each can of powder. Again, chewing gum's popularity won out over baking powder, and Wrigley decided to change products again. Juicy Fruit became the first of Wrigley's lines, becoming now the number one fruit gum in the US and the top choice of any gum amongst children. A few months later, the similarly successful Spearmint flavor made its debut. Since then, the Wrigley company has grown to be one of the largest chewing gum companies worldwide, providing countless varieties and flavors. In 1974, a 10-pack of Juicy Fruit became the first item to be wrung up by scanning a UPC bar-code label, a practice now universal in shopping.

From the great popularity of chewing gum, myriad offshoots have spawned, with gum in the form of balls, pastes, candy-coated tablets, and within lollipops. Amongst the variation, bubble gum deserves an honorable mention. After some failed early attempts to make a stronger, less sticky gum variety, an accountant at the Fleer Chewing Gum Company by the name of Walter Diemar enjoyed experimenting with new gum recipes on his own time. By an accident in 1928, he created a more stretchy and less sticky gum, which he colored pink as it was the only colorant on hand in the factory. The Fleer Company soon began marketing his invention, thus giving birth to Double Bubble. Sugar-free gums sweetened with xylitol have found a great deal of popularity, and have even been shown to increase dental hygiene and reduce cavities and plaque. "Functional" gums also exist as smoking-cessation aids containing cessation, "dental gums" including toothpaste compounds, and caffeinated gum that has found a place within some military MREs.

Chew on.

Words of the Day!
"Spoilate" : to rob, plunder, or despoil
"Spiv" : a man who lives my his wits, without doing any regular or
honest work, esp. one engaged in petty, shady dealings

Cobblestones or Setts? -- Misidentified Paving

Cobblestone streets just instantly conjure up ideas of times gone by and horse-drawn carriages trotting down busy streets of antiquity. This very old style of pavement comprises of rounded stones laid down in sand, mortar, or similar substrates. From a technical standpoint, a "cobble" must be a stone 2.5-10 inches wide (larger, its a boulder, smaller and its on the large end of the pebble spectrum). These roads were a step-up from the common dirt roads of the time, riddled with problems during the rain (water and dirt become mud), dry weather and wind (plenty of dust), or with heavy cart traffic (deep grooves would form in the dirt, creating tripping hazards for pedestrians and horses alike).

While being full of rustic charm, these uneven stones generally create a great deal of noisy traffic, not to mention the difficulties inherent in walking over them. As a result, in the early 19th century sett paving overcame cobblestone work. Setts (also called "Belgian Blocks") were smoother, uniformly quarried and cut rectangular stones which would be laid into the ground as pavement. Sadly, however, setts are almost always mistakenly identified as cobblestones by the uninformed. Setts have much more use in modern day, with still wide-spread popularity as decorative inlay. Sett paving gave way to macadam paving (layering of gravels or sands, with binders applied to form solid surfaces), tarmacs (combining macadam practices with tar coating,) and the asphalt pavements seen throughout the modern world.

As legend has it, many of the earliest cobblestone and sett roads in the East Coast cities of America were made out of stone kept in the ballast of ship journeying across the Atlantic for trade goods. As most of the trading resulted in goods leaving America, the lost ballast weight of the stone would be made up for in raw goods and materials heading back home to the mother country.


Words of the Day!
"Impeccant" : free from sin or wrong; blameless.
"Samara" : a dry, one-seeded, winged fruit, as of the maple.

Tyrian Purple -- The Color of Kings

Purple has been the color of royalty since times of antiquity, with Kings decked out in purple capes and the wearing of purple being the final straw declaring Caesar of ancient Rome to be acting too king-like (resulting in a soon-after assassination of this Rex-like figure).

Its understandable why when this dye was only available by harvesting a few types of sea snails and either milking the substance from them (a very time time and labor consuming activity) or by crushing them entirely and extracting the colorant. With around 12,000 snails needed to produce 1.4 grams of dye, this commodity was reserved only for the wealthiest of wealthy, and definitely a status symbol to be worn.

The most common sea snail (or, marine gastropod for you biology-minded folks) used for this production was Murex brandaris, living mostly in the Mediterranean Sea. The Phoenicians (an ancient North African based empire and early competitor of the Romans) were early producers of the dye, and the Romans quickly followed suit, becoming great fans of this luxury for ceremonial garb.

With the beginning of the fall of the Byzantine Empire in the early 13th Century, Tyrian Purple production largely came to an end, with European royalty thereafter instead focusing on vermillion (made from cinnabar) or crimson (derived from the cochineal scale-insect) for their royal dress.


Words of the Day!
"Accubation" : the process of eating or drinking while laying down
"Jowter" : one who sells fish

Oatmeal

As a first post, lets discuss one of my favorite breakfast foods. Oh, you already know everything about oatmeal? How it just comes in a cardboard roll with the Quaker Oats guy on the cover? You know NOTHING of this fine food.

Oats, most often seen here in America as rolled oats as pictured, are a cereal grain, favoring cooler, wetter climates, like those of Northeastern Europe. Russia, as a result, grows the most oats worldwide, more than twice that of the US and around 1/5th of the world supply.

Oatmeal (also known as porridge) has been touted for its health benefits, with studies showing the soluble fiber in oat bran having effects on lowering LDL levels and decreasing your risk for heart disease. Also, the low caloric content and high fiber results in you consuming fewer calories and staying fuller, longer after consuming a bowlful. Oats also have a protein content very similar to the much celebrated soybean.

When you go to buy your oatmeal, you have a number of choices nowadays, including steel-cut (Irish) oats, Scottish oats, old-fashioned rolled oats, and instant oats. Steel-cut oats are merely whole oats that have been, you guessed it, cut into two or three pieces per groat with steel blades. This form of oat, while retaining much more texture and a nuttier flavor than other processings (and my favorite as a result) take a verrry long time to cook, upwards of half an hour at the least, but very much worth it! Scottish oats, closer to Irish or steel-cut oats, are whole oats that have been ground between stones to a finer grind than Irish oats, taking less time that their close cousin, but still more than rolled-oats.

Rolled-oats (the classic, Quaker oats type you're likely to think of with the word "oatmeal") are whole oats than have basically been flattened by heavy rollers, then lightly steamed and roasted, making a much quicker cooking product (more surface area and par-cooking from the steam). Instant and quick-cooking oatmeal is then derived from rolled-oats, by chopping them up even finer, creating more surface area, a quicker cooking time, and even less texture (blech).

While all these various types of oatmeal have the same nutritional facts (as they're all still just made of oats) they don't have identical health benefits. On the scale of processing, instant oatmeal, with its near powdered oats, have the highest glycemic index rating, meaning they breakdown fasted in your body and release a flood of carbohydrates into your bloodstream. This means quick energy, but not long lasting, resulting in blood sugar and insulin spikes, and hunger returning faster. Irish oats, being the least processed of the bunch, have the lowest GI rating, resulting in the most stable blood sugar levels (great for diabetics) and longest period of fullness.

Armed with your new knowledge about this breakfast of champions, go out and make yourself a bowl.


In other news, your words of the day:
"Flambeau" : a flaming torch
"Sapid" : having flavor