For years, Tom Raviv thought he was being careful about what he put in his body. Working long hours in mergers and acquisitions, he’d read the ingredients on snack or protein bar wrappers as he grabbed them between meetings. One product, however, escaped his scrutiny entirely.
“I’d grab a pack of gum at the checkout, run back to my desk, and never once thought about what I was actually chewing on,” said Raviv in a recent interview with The Spoon.
That changed one day when a simple question stopped him short: Why did he spend so much time learning about ingredients in the food he eats but never once consider what goes into gum? What he found when he googled it surprised him; the primary ingredient in most chewing gum, listed vaguely as “gum base,” is made from petroleum-derived plastics and polymers, the same materials used to make plastic bags and bottles. According to some academic studies, up to 250 thousand microplastics can be found in a single piece of gum.
“I was really shocked,” Raviv said. “I didn’t want to be chewing on plastic and realized the stuff must be going into my body.”
That moment of realization eventually led Raviv to found Milliways in 2021. At the time, he was still at his day job, so he burned the midnight oil on weekends and nights. As he tried to figure out how to make a plastic-free gum, his apartment turned into a makeshift R&D lab.
At one point, a supplier shipped him a kilo of natural tree sap, the traditional chewing material used centuries ago. Eventually, Raviv found partners who could help him translate that raw material into a modern gum product, and soon he had his first product: a plastic gum made from plant-based tree sap, containing no more than seven naturally derived ingredients.
Milliways and Raviv are not alone in their effort to raise awareness of plastic in gum, the health implications of which have come under scientific scrutiny in recent years. A peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials found that chewing gum can release significant quantities of microplastics and nanoplastics into saliva during chewing. For Raviv, the findings reinforce what he already believed.
“When you’re chewing something made from plastic and grinding it down in your mouth, it’s no surprise you’re ingesting it,” said Raviv. “It’s like chewing on a plastic straw. It doesn’t just disappear.”
But Raviv and others believe that the larger issue is transparency, particularly around labeling. ic If people knew chewing gum equals plastic, he argues, most wouldn’t choose it.
That message appears to be resonating. This month, Milliways announced a $3 million funding round led by former senior executives from the global gum industry, including Mehmet Yüksek, former CEO of Perfetti Van Melle North America, and Leon Amram, former owner of Intergum. Since launching in the U.S. just over a year ago, the brand has expanded into more than 2,000 stores nationwide.
For Raviv, his company’s momentum confirms his belief that even small, habitual choices matter.
“It’s not always the big changes,” he said. “Sometimes it’s the little things you do every day. Those things add up, for better or worse.”
You can watch my full interview with Tom below:
