A recent story covered in the Daily Mail and the Daily Express reported that chewing gum could be an excellent aid to memory. It’s a nice idea isn’t it? Many of us enjoy chewing gum on a regular basis and it would be great if doing it could actually help your cognitive abilities. The Daily Mail ran with a story that said “chomping on gum” is good for the memory and can boost your alertness by up to ten percent.
However, the fact of the matter is that this claim is based on what is actually a very small study involving only 17 healthy young adults. A study with such a small sample size means that the results need to be considered carefully and with caution. Most people chew gum whilst they are doing something else – and as such this study doesn’t prove anything of the sort.
The study was carried out by a team of researchers from the National Institute of Radiological Sciences and a number of other academic research centres in Japan. It was an experimental study that looked at whether chewing has an effect on attention and the ability to think quickly. The researchers have said that other studies have found varying results when exploring the link between chewing and functions like attention and memory.
The researchers looked at 19 healthy adults who are aged 20 to 34 years. Two of the volunteers were not included in the final analysis because they had moved during their scan. The volunteers were then made to perform a task of pressing a button depending on whether a pointer was facing left or right. They are were asked to do this both while chewing gum and not chewing gum, with researchers recording the speed and accuracy of the button presses.
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