If you crunch on leafy greens or sip beetroot juice, here's a tip that might help your body get more benefit: chew a piece of sugary bubble gum afterward. That's the surprise finding from a small but careful study at King's College London, published in the journal Food & Function.
The science behind it goes like this. Vegetables like beetroot, spinach, and kale pull nitrate from the soil as they grow. When you eat them, bacteria living in your mouth convert that nitrate into something useful called nitrite. Nitrite helps blood vessels relax and widen, which can lower blood pressure. The problem is, this conversion isn't very efficient — the body can't always make enough nitrite to get the full benefit.
Researchers wondered whether making the mouth more acidic could speed things up. To test that, they gave healthy volunteers a shot of beetroot juice, then had them chew either Hubba Bubba — a sugary bubble gum popular with kids — or a sugar-free gum for three to six hours. They collected saliva and blood samples the whole time and checked blood pressure. Each person came back at least a week later to repeat the test with the other gum.
The results were striking. Chewing the sugary Hubba Bubba dropped the acidity inside the mouth by a full 1.4 points on the pH scale. Nitrite levels in the mouth jumped 45 percent, and the amount circulating in the bloodstream rose 25 percent. Blood pressure fell too — systolic pressure, the top number when the heart pushes blood out, dropped by nearly 3 millimeters of mercury, while diastolic pressure, the bottom number, fell by almost 2 mmHg. The sugar-free gum produced no such effect.
Dr. Andrew Webb, a senior lecturer at King's College London who helped lead the study, said the team was testing a simple idea: if lowering acidity inhibits the conversion, maybe raising acidity would help. "We wanted to formally test whether doing the opposite — increasing the acidity of the saliva — would enhance the conversion of nitrate to nitrite."
The researchers are quick to say this is not a recommendation to start chewing sugary gum regularly. The blood pressure drop was short-lived, and eating too much sugar carries real risks for teeth and overall health. Dr. Webb said the discovery may be most useful for athletes, many of whom already consume beetroot for a performance boost, since nitrite helps deliver oxygen to muscles during exercise.
Co-author Dr. Charlotte Mills, from the University of Reading, said the findings open a new avenue for research. "We are certainly not suggesting that people should start chewing sugary gum regularly," she said. Instead, scientists now have a proof of concept — a starting point — for finding ways to help the body convert nitrate into beneficial nitrite without relying on long-term sugar consumption. One day, that might mean a specially designed gum or food additive that creates the same acidic environment without the sugar.
For now, though, the researchers offered one simpler thought: finishing a vegetable-rich meal with something sweet — fruit, ideally — might naturally give the body a little extra help turning those greens into something that relaxes blood vessels and supports exercise. It's an old eating pattern, given a new scientific twist.