Michael Kellydoes without . . . chewing gum
I gave up smoking about five years ago and took to chewing gum as a replacement therapy. These days I go through a couple of packets of gum a week. The other day I was wondering why I do this, and was surprised to realise that I associate gum with a sort of energy boost. If I am feeling a bit lethargic, I take out the gum and usually feel a bit brighter.
Chewing is known to aid digestion since it increases the production of saliva, so I usually have some gum after a meal, too. Chewing things between meals has been done for thousands of years. Archaeologists found that our ancestors chewed lumps of black tar (yummy) more than 9,000 years ago. Two thousand years ago, the Greeks chewed the pale yellow resin from the mastic tree, while native Americans chewed spruce gum.
It's somewhat alarming to study a packet of modern chewing gum in any great detail, because it's hard to find any natural ingredients listed. Most gum is sugar-free these days, so to provide that refreshing sweetness, a combination of the following sweeteners is typically used: maltitol, sorbitol, mannitol, aspartame (blamed for causing brain lesions, cancers, blindness, the Vietnam war and bad weather) and something called acesulfame k. Compared with that lot, would regular grown-in-the-ground sugar be such a bad thing? The best advice could be that if you don't know what's in it, or what it might do to you, steer clear of it.
To lessen the impact of giving things up, it's important to have substitutes. This week Mrs Kelly's father gets me on to chewing cloves (he calls it "chawing cloves") so that I won't start chewing my fingers. It's an incredibly cheap alternative to chewing gum, and you can shove a handful in your pocket and pick at them when the mood takes you. You don't really chew them at all, you just sort of put them between your gum and your teeth and they soften very slowly. They are something of an acquired taste (they taste, dare I say it, festive) but once you get into them, they are kind of more-ish.
Cloves are listed on the World's Healthiest Foods website (www.whfoods.com) as an excellent source of fibre, vitamin C, omega-3 fatty acids, calcium and magnesium.