My mother used to tell me the same thing. It is nothing more than a myth. I was also told that if I swore near a Dragon Fly (Sewing Needle) that the Dragon Fly would sew my mouth shut.

Usually gum is not digested, and is simply pooped out of the body.
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A man who farts in church, sits in his own pew.

I'm glad my parents were matter-of-fact and never told me such myths (nor did they sugar-coat things). Seven and thirteen are common numbers people like to pick on. Watch for them. They usually signify something that is a myth or a joke. Oh, and they are in the Bible too--maybe people see the Bible loaded with seven and thirteen and go with them from that too.

For the record, I'm neopagan. My numbers are 3 and 42.

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[Insert witty banter here]

uhm this page is about POOP.

nobody cares what your effin neopagan numbers are.



TALK ABOUT POOP.

OK ITS REAL. if you swallow gum it takes 7 years to digest. just admit it. §hit has nothing to do wit this but i know that i have done tests of my own and no its true

ummmm...it's true?
NOOOO it's not. Ya Poop it out. it doesn't hang out in your stomach for 7 years. If that were the case I would have died of malnutrtion somewhere between 7 and 14 because my belly would have been full of Hubba Bubba and Bubble Yum.

This whole gum thing is an old wives tale, and just to verify that, I'll ask Mrs. PD.

Gum takes a day or so. I've tested it.

okay.
duh.
gum is pooped out.
if you really believed the 7-year thing, you're slow :D

BOG, I would like to know how you verified that statement. (did you mean to say "I've tasted it")

I was never told that it took gum seven years to digest. My grandmother told me all sorts of weird things, though. For example, if you swallow Christmas candy instead of sucking on it, you'll die. She also said that if you ate refrozen ice cream that you'd die. In fact, I used to mentally keep score of which bizarre lecture she gave on the car ride from our house to hers:

Episode 1- The wonders of the rumble strip.
Episode 2- Things than can get caught in your drive shaft.
Episode 3- How San Francisco will give you AIDS.
Episode 4- The difference between flammable and inflammable.
Episode 5- How oleander will cause you to die a slow and painful death and the deer don't even eat it so stay away because you might get some on your skin and then it will get in your mouth and you'll be in an early grave.... *pants*

Anyway, according to Grandma, bubblegum does not take seven years to digest. It goes into your appendix.

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Born right the first time.

Well TSV, that explains the giant bubble stuck to my appendix when it was removed.

You had your appendix removed? I bet you were eating oleander.

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.....hugging bunnies since 1969
www.daphneszoo.com

Never ate the stuff. It burst while driving at work about 8 years ago. The hospital I was taken to mis-diagnosed it as a stomach bug. Five days later, just hours from the dirt nap, I was properly diagnosed. It wasn't fun.

You see! That's what you get for swallowing your Christmas candy in San Francisco!

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Born right the first time.

im doing a project on it and nothing happened in a month so i think it does stay in your stomach for a couple of years and i always thought it was three not seven

Are you doing the false stomach environment in a glass flask with the gum? That sounds interesting.

But, maybe, the gum doesn't have be digested, as it would pass out of the stomach with the following meal, to be passed through the colon later. What does your teacher say?

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.....hugging bunnies since 1969
www.daphneszoo.com

That would make a GREAT science fair project! Wish I'd thought of it when I was in school!

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Born right the first time.

I had my friend eat gum at 9am and he had it out of his anus at 9pm that same night. I know it was the gum he ate that morning because it came out together with some corn which he added to his breakfast as markers to time the time taken for corn to pass through him. It came out embedded on the side of a 6 inch long turd.

From what I can gather, gum doesn't digest but passes whole through the digestive tract. As a science project this would be messy because gum isn't very big (usually) and might be concealed inside a turd with nothing showing on the outside, so the experimenter would have to take apart all turds just to verify that the gum was or wasn't there. Yucky, germy, filthy. If there were barium gum, you could x-ray the turds to detect it. It would be a good test of your transit time (time from swallowing something to pooping it out).

MSG, I guess a simpler way would be to eat about 100 or so pieces of gum. That way some of it is bound to wind up poking the surface of the land mine. I also wonder if the gum would still be chewable.