What to look for when buying mastic gum

Sadly, like much of the health world—both mainstream and alternative—the mastic gum market is filled with fakes, frauds, and phonies who prey on honest, up-and-coming chads, looking to chisel their jawline for cheap…and if you make the wrong choice in which brand to buy, cheap’s exactly what you’ll get.

Some common problems you’ll face when buying mastic gum from most brands are:

• Poor sourcing and quality control, leading to your order being filled with soft and sticky or hard and brittle pieces that are ineffective for building jaw muscle
• Half-filled tins and horrible customer service that make you want to rip your hair out—trust us, we’ve tried all our competitors and we’ve got some horror stories to share
• Potentially poisonous plastic packaging and bad shipping methods that compromise the gum’s structural integrity and health profile
• False advertising, fake reviews, missing orders, and other shady behavior

Considering these and the high price of mastic gum, you’ll also want to ensure you’re getting a product that actually works and won’t poison you; click here and here to get definitive answers on the effectiveness of mastic gum and why you want to avoid generic gums, respectively.

So, to aid you in your quest—whether you want to enhance your facial attractiveness, treat your gut issues, or raise your testosterone—we’ve outlined below exactly what to look for when buying a high-quality mastic gum, as well as what sets Greco Gum so far apart, soaring high above the sea of subpar, soft and sticky slop sold by most of our competition.

#1: Sourcing, sorting, and authenticity

If you’ve ever ordered mastic gum online, you know how disappointing it is to find both hard and brittle or as soft and sticky pieces in your order that easily disintegrate, get stuck in your teeth, and don’t provide enough resistance for a vigorous jaw workout. But when you buy from a trusted source that respects certifications, you’ll rarely encounter these problems.

Mastic gum is designated as a specialty product with Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status in the EU, meaning authentic mastic resin must originate from Chios’ unique mastic-producing villages, where most farmers are members of the Chios Mastiha Growers’ Association, which certifies quality and cleanliness.¹

If you order from a company that doesn’t specify this accolate in their sourcing, you may end up chewing poor quality black market mastic—cough cough most mastic gums on Amazon—that hasn’t been properly cleaned, and contains residues of dirt, sticks, bugs, and other things you certainly don’t want in your mouth…unless you’re weird like that. Extra protein, I guess?

#2: Size distinctions and use cases

Because mastic gum naturally varies in size and shape, top-notch mastic gum brands will not only have quality control measures put into place once they receive the bulk product in the U.S., but they’ll also sort pieces into larger and smaller categories and sell them as such so customers can buy the right-sized tears according to their need and receive uniform sizes of gum.

Use case A: Jawline

For example, if you’re a beginner at chewing mastic gum for jawline gains, you’ll want to start with larger, softer pieces that naturally contain more moisture (like Greco Gum’s Nuggets) to avoid any jaw muscle strain. But still, as a newbie, you can also try out harder, smaller pieces (like our Droplets), but you may find your jaws prefer a softer chew to begin with, or that a mix of the two is your goldilocks zone.

Use cases B-Z: gut health and beyond

If you’re chewing mastic gum for gut health or any of the many other health reasons, any size mastic gum will work great, but you may want to forgo chewing entirely by simply supplementing mastic gum powder in capsule form—especially if you have sensitive teeth or recent dental work that might be damaged by chewing something tough like mastic gum.

#3: Non-plastic packaging and reliable shipping

It may be an afterthought to you, but the packaging your mastic gum comes in affects both the gum’s consistency and its bill of health—and therefore yours too. Most companies ship their mastic gum in non-food-grade plastic bags, which is a huge problem because normal shipping practices leave their contents notoriously hot (think sitting for hours in a hot truck or metal mailbox).

This not only leads to the potential leaching of carcinogenic, endocrine-disrupting microplastics and other toxic plasticizer chemicals like BPA and phthalates found in the plastic packaging into your mastic gum and mouth, but also to the mastic gum itself congealing into a sticky, amorphous blob that you’re unable to separate into chewable pieces.²

To combat these issues, great brands like Greco Gum will use perishable shipping methods when ordering the product in bulk from Greece, then packaging orders in metal tins that keep things cool to avoid melting—no plastic, no nonsense. If you ever receive any mastic gum less than top quality from Greco Gum, we’ll send you a replacement, no questions asked.

#4: Piece count and chew time

Because mastic gum is expensive, you’ll want to know how much you’re actually getting per pack and how long that will last you to get the best bang for your buck. Therefore, the best mastic gum brands will assuage your worries of half-empty tins and having to re-up every week by providing these four key stats:

1. The weight of the product itself—like Greco Gum’s Klassiko Nuggets and Droplets at 45g each, or the Mikro Nuggets and Droplets at 15g
2. The size of the mastic gum tears—like Greco Gum’s Nuggets at 17mm or Droplets at 6mm each, large pieces and small pieces respectively
3. A count of the pieces in a pack—like Greco Gum’s demonstration of piece count in each of their Nuggets (~130) and Droplets (700+!)
4. An estimate for how long the pack will last you—like Greco Gum’s note that both their Klassiko Nuggets and Droplets last about 6 weeks vs. the Mikro Droplets that last 2 weeks

We advise you to choose a brand that displays this information publicly because we’ve heard many jaw-dropping stories from customers who tried other mastic gum products before Greco Gum, because they were cheaper, only to receive a half-filled pack that contained more dust than gum…or worse, never received their order at all.

#5: Customer service, returns, and reviews

Given all of the hype around mastic gum, you’d think brands would be eager to provide trust signals customers can use to pick them out of the pack as genuine suppliers. But no, trust and integrity in the mastic gum market is scarcer than a snowball in hell. A reputable seller of mastic gum will typically offer:

1. Quick, responsive support, which you can test by sending a quick email or DM (no social media presence is a red flag, too). Greco Gum prides itself on timely customer support and user satisfaction, and if you’ve ever interacted with us, you’d be able to vouch for that.

2. Clear, fair return/replacement policies that acknowledge mastic gum’s malleability under heat and will honor your word and evidence about the quality of gum you receive. Customer-friendly policies indicate confidence in product quality and a desire to maintain reputation. If you see reviews mentioning that the seller refused to address a legitimate complaint, your spidey senses should be tingling.
   
   If, in some freak fluke, you receive a stingily-packed tin or melted mastic gum from Greco Gum, send us an email and we’ll quickly send a fresh replacement right your way.

3. Verified ratings and reviews from real customers; anything less than 4 stars is concerning and indicates poor delivery or quality. Additionally, high-profile customers with public personas are a plus, as their reputation is on the line if they’re tied to a poor-quality company, so you know you’re getting the real deal.
   
   You’ll notice verified reviews on the Greco Gum site from holistic health heavy hitters like SolBrah and Marcel Shaar (who had quite the facial transformation from chewing Greco Gum for a year).

The Greco Gum guarantee

So there you have it—everything to look out for when buying mastic gum if you’re a new user or if you’ve bought and chewed mastic gum before, but weren’t satisfied with your experience.

Because Greco Gum:

• Only sources from the best
• Has internal sorting procedures for quality and use case
• Ships to your door with protection and preservation in mind
• Provides top-notch customer support and social proof

You’ll rarely—if ever—encounter any of these issues when ordering from us.

So do yourself a favor and skip the headache that comes with ordering from other mastic gum brands—get yourself a tin or two (or 4 to save 10% with our Adonis Pack) of Greco Gum and start chewing the healthiest gum in the world.