Glee Gum Review and Giveaway

My husband and I love chewing gum in fact we enjoy it so much my friends and family are always asking me what kind I think they should try next! Now I don’t call myself a gum gurue here but I do think a know a little bit about gum and I’m trying to cut down on my sugar intake since I’m on a diet and trying to loose weight but most of the “sugar free” gum on the market is chocked full of chemicals and not-so good for you ingredients. I recently ran across a gum called Glee Gum and I was lucky enough to get a chance to sample and review a few of their flavors, but before I get to that let me share a little bit about Glee Gum:

Glee Gum is all natural chewing gum made with sustainably harvested rainforest chicle. It comes in SIX great flavors: cinnamon, peppermint, tangerine, bubblegum, spearmint, and triple berry. Glee Gum is the #1 healthy alternative to synthetic chewing gum and bubble gum! With no artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners (no aspartame), or preservatives, it's easy to chew Glee-fully!

Glee Gum is made with all natural ingredients including: pure cane sugar, rice syrup, natural flavorings and colorings. Our gum base has super chewy natural chicle harvested from Sapodilla trees in the rain forests of Central America.

Glee Gum is: Vegetarian, Additive Free, Lactose Free, Dairy Free, Wheat Free, Gluten Free, Casein Free, Egg Free, Yeast Free, Nut Free, and Peanut Free.
* All Glee Gum is soy free. Please note, however, that other products containing soy lecithin are processed in the same facility as Glee Gum.

Glee Gum has: all natural ingredients, rice syrup instead of corn syrup, natural chicle, delicious, long-lasting, and popular flavors: tangerine, peppermint, cinnamon, spearmint, bubblegum and triple berry.

Glee Gum does NOT have: artificial preservatives, artificial flavors, artificial colors, artificial sweeteners (e.g. aspartame, saccharin or cyclamate).

Here is the story of Glee Gum (from the website)

When you pop a piece of gum into your mouth, you're more likely to be concerned with its taste and bubble capabilities than with its history. But if you were to wonder about the origins of your gum, you'd have a lot more to chew on. The story behind chewing gum is a flavorful one, complete with an unlikely partnership between a famous Mexican general and an American inventor, wild get-rich-quick schemes, and the mastication habits of a lost civilization.

Chewing for pleasure goes back to the Ancient Greeks, who chewed on the resin of the mastic tree. The Maya, too, developed the custom well over a thousand years ago, chewing the coagulated sap of the Sapodilla tree, a treat known today as chicle. The Maya abandoned their cities for mysterious reasons around the year 800, but fortunately for us, they retained their custom of chewing chicle.
1869 marks the year that modern day gum products were born. The famous Mexican General, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (remember the Alamo?) was looking for a way to commercially exploit the properties of chicle. Unaware of its chewable virtues, Santa Anna originally hoped chicle could be exported as a rubber substitute, and passed it along to American inventor Thomas Adams. Adams found chicle unsuitable as a base for rubber, but realized its potential as a chewing gum after boiling it and rolling it in sugar. His boiled chicle vastly outsold all other varieties of gum available at the time, and thus revolutionized the industry.

The market for chewing gum has grown remarkably through the years, from a yearly consumption in the United States of 39 sticks per person in 1914 to 200 sticks per person today. However, almost all gum is now made completely from synthetic materials. Only Glee chewing gum, and some sold in the Far East contain chicle.

In Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize, chicle still represents an important part of the economy for the chicleros who harvest it. From September to January, a time of torrential rains, the chicleros hike out to remote parts of the rainforest, seeking either virgin chicle trees or those that were tapped several years before. They climb into the tree and make a series of cuts with their machete, taking care that they cut only deep enough to allow the white sap to bleed out, but not deep enough to expose the tree to insects or infection. Each tapping only yields about 2.5 pounds of gum over a six-hour period, and a chiclero will tap 6-12 trees a day in order to make his quota.

The movement for rainforest sustainability depends, in part, on non-timber forest products, advocating for renewable resources that can be made economically viable. Verve hopes that the forest can be more profitable standing than cut down.

Now there's something to chew on, along with your next piece of chicle-based gum!

My thoughts of the flavors I reviewed:



Cinnamon- This was by far my favorite of all the flavors I tried! It had a very pleasant cinnamon taste not to strong and not to little!



Spearmint- I also really liked the spearmint it had just the right amount of flavor and lasted a fairly long while!



Bubblegum- Ok so I think the name Bubblegum says it all! This flavor really reminded me of the old fashioned bubble gum that you can only find around Halloween!

So what’s my overall opinion of Glee Gums? Well I have to say they are great! I would defiantly recommend Glee Gum to my friends and family as well as all my readers! The have an awesomely old school gum vibe and that make it that much more awesome!

Want to buy it: You can get your very own packages of Glee Gum online HERE

Giveaway:

Glee Gum has offered to give 3 of my very lucky readers 3 packs of Glee Gum each.


Mandatory Entry: Go to the Glee Gum website and tell me something you learned that I have not mentioned here. Please remember to leave your e-mail address if it’s not visible in your profile.

Want or need extra entries? Check out how to grab em’ below! (Mandatory Entry must be complete for these to count)

1. Become a public follower of my blog (current follower cout too)

2. Follow me on twitter @sgrant2005 and tweet this giveaway (can be done daily)

3. Subscribe to my feed via a reader

4. Blog about this giveaway with a link to Glee Gum and this post and be sure to leave me a link(5 extra)

5. Become a fan of Glee Gum on Facebook (Leave Username)

6. Follow Glee Gum on Twitter

7. Become a friend of Glee Gum on Myspace

8. Become a follow of the Glee Gum Blog

Giveaway ends Jan. 27, 2010 @ midnight CST. Winner will be chosen at random, using random.org and contacted by e-mail and has 48 hrs to respond before a new winner is chosen.

This review is based strictly my opinion. Others may have a different opinion with the product listed above. I was sent a few samples of Glee Gum flavors for free for review purposes!