TikTokers Are Pushing Facial Gum For Chiseled Jaws, But Where’s The Evidence?

Should you jump on this chew-chew train? TikTokers promote chewing so-called “face gum” to give you a more chiseled jawline. The claim is that chewing such gum for a long time will train and therefore strengthen your jaw muscles. And stronger jaw muscles will probably make you look more like Henry Cavill, Lord Farquadd Shrek, and other men with chiseled jawlines, which is presumably a good sweeping quality. The question is whether these TikTokkers use any scientific evidence to support such claims. Well, sorry to burst everyone’s gum bubble here, but the answer isn’t real.

Several companies such as Stronger Gum, Jawz, and Rockjaw have marketed this “face gum,” which is supposed to be harder to chew and last longer than more standard types of gum. They consist of several types of tree resin called mastic. The theory is that as you chew this gum, anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours, you give your jaw a major workout, making the muscles stronger.

Stronger Eraser, for example, says further his website: “Stronger jaw muscles are not only beneficial for facial appearance, but also essential for health.” The website goes on to say: “Strong jaw muscles promote correct oral posture: the mouth closed, the teeth in alignment, the tongue resting against the palate and a stable head position.” There is even talk about how this can help with breathing and “deliver up to 20% more oxygen to your body.”

So do these ‘face gum’ manufacturers post clinical trials comparing the faces of people who chewed their gum with those who didn’t or chewed some kind of placebo? Not exactly. Some people have pointed it out a study published in the journal Scientific reports in 2019, titled “Vigorous chewing activates osteocytes and builds a strong jawbone.” But there was something very mouse-like rather than human about this study. It showed that fats fed a diet consisting of harder foods ultimately showed greater chewing power. This in turn led to more growth factors in bone-producing cells in the jawbone called osteocytes, and as a result, more bone formation.

This study does. did not evaluate whether these mice ultimately looked more like Henry Cavill at the end of the experiment. It also didn’t determine whether these mice were given more swiping privileges on Tinder or dates in general. More bone formation in the jaws does not automatically translate into more chiseled jaws. Furthermore, mice are not exactly the same as humans.

It turns out that changing the structure of your face may not be so easy without major surgery. If it were that easy to change the structure of your face by changing what you chew, you’d see more changes in people’s facial expressions when they change their diets, as in “Oh, Jim, I’m sorry I looked at you.” for Timothée Chalamet. You must have been eating more nuts lately.” Even if changing what and how you chew would somehow affect your jaw components, more evidence is needed to show if and how it can change your appearance.

At the same time, chewing more and more vigorously is not without risks. You may experience jaw pain, headaches and other symptoms of temporomandibular joint syndrome. Depending on what you chew, you can even damage your teeth and other structures in and around your mouth.

This facial gum trend appears to be yet another attempt at “looksmaxxing,” a larger trend in which men try to change their physical appearance. I have already written for it Forbes about other “looksmaxxing” trends, such as bone breaking, where men hit their faces with hammers in an attempt to change the shape of their faces. An important point to make is that many things you see on social media are not supported by scientific evidence and can in fact be quite dangerous.