Boing Boing

Boing Boing

The mysterious cognitive effects of chewing gum

Ellsworth Toohey
Jan 13, 2026
∙ Paid

Pixel-Shot/shutterstock.com

“I guess people chew harder when they are sad,” William Wrigley Jr. said during the Great Depression, as his gum empire kept making money while tens of thousands of businesses went bankrupt. A 1918 Wrigley ad promised gum “steadies nerves.” Now, with gum sales down by almost a third since the pandemic and classics like Fruit S…

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