Caron proschan finished a salad for lunch. she felt good about her healthy choice . . until she went to pop a piece of gum into her mouth. proschan read the package’s label and realized she couldn’t identify most of the ingredients. “i immediately noticed the contrast between what i’d just eaten and the artificial product i was holding in my hand,” she says.

proschan, who worked in finance and real estate in new york city, did some digging to find out more. she learned that gum usually contains many synthetic compounds, like artificial sweeteners and flavors, made to mimic natural substances. most gum also shares a surprising—and unappetizing—main ingredient: plastic.

jeremy kirby photography/courtesy of simply gum
at-home inventor: caron proschan developed the recipe for simply gum in her kitchen.
what’s in gum?

bianca alexis

proschan thought that other people probably didn’t realize they’d been chewing on hunks of flavored plastic either. or that tossing their used gum was creating plastic pollution that would stick around for a long time. and if they did know, they might want a better option. so proschan decided to make one.

“i started by researching the conventional ingredients in gum and then looked for natural alternatives to replace them,” says proschan. she learned that before the 1950s, instead of plastic, gum was made from chicle (chi-klee). this sticky substance comes from certain trees. proschan decided to use this biodegradable material, which breaks down easily in the environment, as her gum base. next, she chose to replace artificial sweeteners with sugar, and artificial flavorings with natural oils and extracts (see gum gets real).

gum gets real
here are the ingredients simply gum uses instead of the ones in regular gum.

courtesy of simply gum

chewy base: chicle, made from sapodilla tree sap and wax from the candelilla plant, replaces gum base containing plastic.

courtesy of simply gum

sweeteners: pesticide-free, minimally processed organic raw cane sugar replaces sorbitol and aspartame.

courtesy of simply gum

moisteners: syrup-like organic vegetable glycerin made from vegetable oils replaces the synthetic softener glycerol.

courtesy of simply gum

flavors: oils and extracts from plants like mint and cinnamon replace flavors made in a lab.

courtesy of simply gum

not too sticky: organic rice flour replaces mannitol, an artificial sweetener used so the gum doesn’t stick to packaging.

sticky solution
proschan picked a few other ingredients to add to her product so it would have a consistency similar to that of traditional gum. “i ordered everything online,” she says, “and then started tinkering in my kitchen.” proschan tested various recipes with different amounts of ingredients. she found that adding too much flavoring, for example, made the gum slippery and soft. too much chicle, on the other hand, made the gum too dense and hard.

after a lot of trial and error, proschan came up with a mixture that worked. but when she made larger batches, the gum’s texture didn’t turn out right. she had to go back to the drawing board. it took her about a year to figure out the right proportions of ingredients to make larger amounts. proschan began selling her product, called simply gum, to local grocery stores and then expanded to shops across the country.

proschan recently had to move production out of her home kitchen and into a factory in new york city to keep up with demand for her product. “until now, there has been very little innovation in the gum industry,” she says. “i saw simply gum as an opportunity to do something exciting and new.”

investigate it!
inventors often seek to solve a problem. once they’ve defined the issue, they do research and design a solution. then they test and improve their idea until it works just right. think about how caron proschan used this process. then answer the questions below.

1)what problem did proschan want to solve?

2)what were some criteria, or standards, proschan decided on when she began developing her gum?

3)what were some of the constraints, or limitations, proschan encountered when creating her product?

4)design a gum package that communicates how simply gum is different from most other gums on the market.