Although chewing gum is designed to be chewed and not swallowed, it is generally not harmful if swallowed.
You may have heard from the elderly that swallowed gum stays in your stomach for seven years before it is digested, but this is not true at all. If you swallow gum, it is true that your body cannot digest it. However, the gum does not stay in your stomach. It moves relatively intact through your digestive system and comes out with the stool.
In very rare cases, large amounts of ingested gum, combined with constipation, have blocked the intestines in children. Precisely for this reason frequent chewing of gum is not advised, especially in children.
