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So what really happened to the chewing gum that you swallowed when you were a kid? Did it really take seven years to digest, as at least one concerned adult probably told you? And if you've swallowed a stick of gum since then, is it now stuck to your insides?
 Aside from possibly taking a bit longer to pass through the body, chewing gum is treated the same as any other food that passes through your digestive tract. Although gum is resistant to the human body's efforts to break it down, it doesn't take that much longer to process. Our system is built to process what we eat in a matter of hours. We're talking days at most – not years.
Gum is typically made up of four components – flavor, sweetener, softeners and gum base – and humans digest the first three out of these four components. Gum base consists of synthetic chemicals, which are resistant to the digestive properties of saliva, but once it's swallowed, it goes down the same path as any other concoctions recognized by your body as useless.
While it doesn't take seven years to digest, making a habit of swallowing gum is still not a great idea. Granted, you would need to swallow a LOT of gum over a long period of time to have it wreak havoc on your digestive tract and require medical attention. Blockage can occur when a person swallows gum along with foreign objects such as coins, or other undigestibles such as sunflower seeds. But apart from these scenarios, swallowing an occasional piece of gum is harmless.
So where did this urban legend come from? No one really knows. There is the assertion that it  came from generations of parents trying to teach their children not to swallow non-food items. Most likely it comes from the nature of gum itself. No matter how long or hard we chew gum, it barely gets smaller – giving it a special property that allows for the idea that it will stick around in our digestive tract for years.
So rest assured – that piece of Bubble Yum you swallowed back in college is loooooong gone.
References:
http://listverse.com/2009/02/15/top-10-common-medical-myths/
http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/digestive/gum-seven-years.htm
http://www.snopes.com/oldwives/chewgum.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-chewing-gum-takes-seven-years-to-digest
http://www.dukehealth.org/health_library/health_articles/myth_or_fact_it_takes_seven_years_to_digest_chewing_gum
http://kidshealth.org/kid/talk/yucky/swallowed_gum.html
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