According to a new study by Netherlands, Groningen University, chewing sugar-free gum for 10 minutes can “eliminate” 100 million of bacteria which is equivalent to 10% of the microbial content of saliva. The way of chewing it for the first 30 seconds is most effective, but if you chew for too long, gum adhesion of bacteria can be released from the chewing gum again.

Researchers asked testers to chew 2 brands of sugar-free gum but did not disclose the brands. 10 minutes later, the chewing gums are placed under a scanning electron microscope and up to100 million bacteria are found in every piece of gum. The cleaning effect is almost as good as FLOSS, just both way of cleaning teeth are not the same. Researchers hope that a future chewing gum can be designed to eliminate certain oral bacteria. Related study is published in the journal public library of Science (PLoS ONE).