I think so: I think this very thread may be the first time in my life I've ever heard someone use the term "gum" to mean "gum except for the secreted juices you swallow and digest."
>
> It seems gum would have to be considered a mixture of food and non-food (kind of like Kinder Eggs, only not), albeit one in which the non-food component is much greater.
>
> --
>
> * Who thinks chewing something that "secretes juices" is gross?


Oh, puhlease.
Is gum ever NOTICEABLY smaller when you spit it out than when you first began chewing it? No. The flavor is only put there so that the chewing sensation is made more enjoyable, but plenty of people keep chewing gum after the flavor is gone. Then they spit it out. It is not food. Some of its components may arguably be food, but the same can be said for things like glue, which, while being eaten by some second graders, is not food.
The gum itself, flavored or not, it not food. Adobe has hay it in. Hay is food to cows and horses. Adobe is not food. Gum is not food.

Moush