Raspberry & Vanilla Gum Box, 24 Packs

by Rebecca Caughey

Q&A: Five questions with True Gum co-founder Peter Juul Regnersgaard

How did True Gum go from being an idea between university friends to an international brand challenging the chewing gum market to be more sustainable? True Gum co-founder Peter Juul Regnersgaard sits down to answer some commonly asked questions.   Q: What were you doing before you started this business? Peter: None of us at True Gum have previously been working with chewing gum or food or anything like that. Previously, we all came out of university here in Copenhagen but have no prior experience with building a food start-up like True Gum has become now. So our background is more traditional, working 9-5 and then suddenly we ventured into this True Gum business because we saw the possibility of doing a plastic-free product.   Q: What were the main challenges you faced developing this product? Peter: There we so many challenges developing this product since we produced everything ourselves. The list is so long. If you think it’s easy to make a chewing gum - it’s not [laughs].   Q: How do you get the super crunchy coating without adding sugar? Peter: As you know might know True Gum is 100% sugar free, that’s because we use zero calorie plant-based sweetners. And these sweetners we use on the inside are the ones we use for the coating.   Q: Where do you source the raw gum from? Peter: That’s a really great question. The big difference between True Gum and regular gum is that we are not using any artificial plastic base, but we are using real gum and tree sap. We are getting it from trees that grow in Central America, coming from different parts of that region. Also pretty important for me to highlight that this is extraction and harvesting is a sustainable process, no trees are cut down, no trees are killed. Actually it gives the local people an incentive to preserve the trees in the Central American rainforest and also gives them a source of income. So, it’s actually quite a good win-win situation. And everything is transported by boat so that’s how we’re getting it to Denmark.    Q: Do you think the sustainable approach will become more popular and will affect other fields? Peter: We think and hope that sustainable chewing gum and plastic free chewing gum will become increasingly popular in the future when we’re also able to make the distribution of true gum chewing gum wider making it even more easier for people to get hold of our plastic free alternative. And I think that some of these plastic free eco trends are obviously rolling across many different food and drinks categories and I think there is room for small players like True Gum to make a difference, and also hopefully inspire some of the bigger companies to start thinking more sustainably about how they produce their products and what ingredients they use.

by Rebecca Caughey

The Problem With Plastic In Chewing Gum - True Gum

A Sticky Situation...If you look at any street, chances are you’ll see these marks ...that’s chewing gum. Old chewing gum, and it’s probably been there for years. This gum is the second most common form of litter in the world...and generates around 100,000 tonnes of global waste a year.The microplastics from waste gum can reach the oceans, where sealife can consume it. That way, it makes its way into our food chain.The plastic polymers in this gum are the same as those found in car tyres and plastic bottles. That means the gum can’t biodegrade, so it sticks to our streets forever. We think our world deserves better. SO WHAT IS TRUE GUM DOING TO HELP? Goodbye plastics, hello plants! Well, True Gum are starting at the core, by going 100% plant-based, from their gum to their flavours. Plastic-free, eco-friendly packaging True Gum have also said a big NO THANKS to plastic packaging (the ones traditional gums use). Instead, they use cardboard boxes illustrated using inspiration from their natural ingredients.