Question: My children
like chewing gum. Can I buy them gum without a hechsher considering that
they don’t swallow it? Do they recite a beracha?
Answer: There are a few potentially problematic ingredients in gum. Both the
emulsifier in the gum base and the glycerine used to soften the gum can
originate from animal fat. Additionally, the flavourings are often non-kosher.
While gum is not supposed to be swallowed, most of the ingredients are its
flavourings which certainly are ingested.
As gum manufacturers do not legally need to
list all of the ingredients, and other non-kosher products may be produced on
the same machinery, it doesn’t help to just rely on the listed ingredients.
The Rema (YD 108:5) writes that one mustn’t
even taste non-kosher food that one intends to spit out. Certainly then, one
must only chew gum that one knows to be kosher.
While there are poskim (Birkas
Hashem, maamarim 1) that hold that one does not recite a beracha before
chewing gum, most follow R’ Ovadia Yosef (Yabia
Omer 7 OC:33) and R’ Ephraim Greenblatt (Rivevos Ephraim 6:80:2; 7:219) and
recite shehakol.
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