It might seem counterintuitive. They do carry 15 flavors of sugary syrups and a variety of powdered sugars and fats ready to be liquified and sucked down. But they have another weapon up their little corporate sleeves: Starbucks After Coffee Chewing Gum. Available in four flavors, the gum is sugarless, and sweetened with xylitol. Xylitol is a sugar substitute. It is found in nature and can be extracted from many fruits and vegetables. It is also ten times as expensive as other popular sugar substitutes, such as sorbitol.
Xylitol is also the only sugar substitute currently available that actually fights cavities, which are also called dental caries. Xylitol has magical properties that fight the bacteria that cause dental caries. Used as an ingredient in chewing gum, xylitol can take an active part in preventing the demineralization of tooth enamel. In fact, since xylitol is found naturally in birch bark, humans have been using it to aid in dental care since the Stone Age.
I have been checking around, and only a couple different brands of gum containing xylitol are readily available. They can be found easily on the Internet, but so far the Starbucks gum is the only gum I have come across right on the shelf that contains xylitol. So pick up a vanilla latte with sugar on top, and a tiny can of overpriced gum. Your teeth are worth it.
Image courtesy of 3Dchem.com
9 Comments
Score one for the SBUX.
This was a very good fun fact by the way.
Haha nice article you found on xylitol from the Stone Age. I might have to start chewing tree bark to kill 2 birds with one stone.
This is the kind of thing that makes me shake my head.
Part of the fun of drinking or eating stuff that is bad for us is not caring that it is bad for us.
They should never make stuff that is supposed to bad for us good for us. It kills the pleasure factor. Well for me anyway.
Who ever said chewing gum was supposed to be bad for you?
HBubba Bubba, Bubbalicious, Bazooka Joe and many other chewing gums from my child hood that were nothing but sugar.
I used to get bazooka joe from the ice cream truck, but it always pissed me off because it lost its flavor too fast. Now big league chew was where it was at.
How about the gum that came with the baseball card packs? Big league chew was def. where it was at!
Bazooka Joe was all about the comics.