This writer has eschewed chewing gum for longer than he can remember. It is an abstinence to which he intends to stick. One remembers how, coming in from recess at school, it was not unknown to stick a wad of gum under the desk to await future use. Sometimes it remained there until summer holidays came. By then its 'best-before' date was long past and the custodians had extra work to do.

All of our teachers thought that if we concentrated on the assigned work we would have neither thought nor need for gum. None of us was as yet able to argue that chewing something other than the tip of a pencil might aid concentration, reduce the stress of the teacherpupil relationship and facilitate the learning process. Anyway, nobody that I can remember was ready in Runnymede Public School to argue with Miss Scott or Mr Hambly. They, by the way, eventually married and, one assumes, had their own tensions to contend with.

A Toronto entrepreneur is about to introduce a new brand of chewing gum that he claims will be good for you. The idea came from manufacturers who have for some time been adding extra vitamins to food and beverages. Why not, then, add them to gum? An antioxidant, in case you have forgotten, is a substance such as beta carotene and vitamins C or E that slow the cell damage, to which all mortal flesh is heir, done by 'free radicals'. Certain fruits, vegetables, nuts and whole grains are especially beneficial. We shall soon see cranberry and green tea 'Bonus Gum' by which one can chomp one's way to better health.

The antioxidant function in the body has been liked to that which keeps the white of a sliced apple from turning brown. I have usually achieved that by immersing the cut fruit in water. If, however, my piebaking friends tell me, you dip apple slices in vitamin C-rich orange juice they also resist discolouration.

Whether similar benefit occurs when orange sections are put into apple juice suggests a subject for research. Who knows what kind of breakthrough awaits? But we have long since been warned about the inadvisability of mixing apples and oranges.

The worldwide chewing gum industry, dominated by Wrigley (U.S.) and Cadbury (U.K.) sells about $20 billion worth of the product each year. Some say that it is available in 100 varieties and flavours, from the band-aid sized stick to the candy-coated 'chiclet' with the dimensions of a cough drop. The flavours I remember best were Juicy Fruit and Spearmint. Oh yes, and Doublemint. Now, one hears, they include Cocacola and its Pepsi imitator, root beer, liquorice and watermelon. How long may it be before it is available in Cabernet sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot grigio and Gewürtraminer? Or in a smoky Laphroaig for the single malt connoisseur?

Any new producer of chewing gum should, perhaps, market a Santa Anna brand to parallel the inexpensive but amusing Santa Carolina (Chilean) wines. It should have wide appeal to the growing and increasingly politically assertive Latino population in a nearby republic. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was the Mexican general and not entirely admirable politician who led the unsuccessful effort to prevent the U.S. occupation of a vast Mexican territory in the 1846-8 war. That was the land-grab during which New England's Henry David Thoreau went to jail rather than pay the poll tax levied to pay for it.

Few Canadians know the story of how 200 anglophone 'Gringos', including one Davy Crockett, "king of the wild frontier", were attacked and slaughtered when they barricaded themselves against 4,000 Mexicans in an old mission compound situated in a grove of cottonwood trees ('alamos' in Spanish). General Santa Anna led the Mexican defenders of their territory. "Remember the Alamo!" became the war cry of the insurgents led by Col. Sam Houston.

After the U.S.-Mexican War, Santa Anna was exiled for a time to Staten Island, off the tip of Manhattan. Like many of his countrymen he chewed chicle, a latex-like substance to which Spanish settlers had attributed the beautifully white teeth of Central American natives. In 1850 he introduced the custom to an inventor, Thomas Adams, who was looking for a substitute for expensive rubber in the manufacture of tires. Frustrated by the effort, Adams one day popped some of the stuff into his mouth to chew just as the northern Indians had taught English settlers to chew spruce gum. His wife suggested that he boil it, add sugar and flavour it with mint. He did so and with her rolling pin flattened it, dried it and cut it into strips for sale. A pleasant substitute for the grossness of chewing tobacco was born.

Product development was rapid. A physician named Beeman added pepsin powder to create a chewable aid to digestion. Franklin Canning, a dentist, introduced toothcleansing 'dentyne' gum. As late as 1928 a bubble gum that blew non-sticky balloons tinted by pink food colouring added to the vulgar habits of North American youth. It was only in the 1950s that sugarless gum was marketed. By that time I had kicked the habit. Then came a gum that would not adhere to dentures, a boon for many who play cards at seniors' centres.

The ancient Greeks had chewed 'gum mastic', resin from the low-growing mastic bush that was native to the Aegean island of Chios. Its flavour is that of the popular 'mastika' liqueur. One hopes that Socrates and his students did not chew gum mastic while they sauntered and talked in the Painted Stoa (open porch) in the Athenian agora.

Surely, as in the dialogue with Simmias, in which he discusses with his peripatetic students what one must eschew in a well-disciplined life he would have included the matter of chewing gum if it had arisen. I didn't.

If chewing gum has been a substitute for biting one's nails or for the oral satisfaction of cigarettes, it has been a giant step forward for mankind. Will developments in the industry produce a new "chewing gum bracket" for discerning people? We will have to wait to see what people chose.