Wax is used in more than just candles. From the food you eat to the products you use, wax is a common ingredient. Check out these five uses you probably didn’t know about!
1. Chewing Gum
A blend of food-grade waxes is commonly used in chewing gum. Hard, high melt-point waxes like microcrystalline and candelilla are commonly used. Combined with resin and elastomers, this wax gives gum its malleability for chewing.
2. Lava Lamps
The floating blobs of “lava” in a lava lamp is colored wax. As the wax heats up, it begins to melt and float to the top in clumps. As the wax travels to the top of the lamp, it begins to cool, slowly dropping back down to the base to be heated again.
Food-grade paraffin wax is added to chocolate candy to give it a glossy finish and the keep the chocolate in a solid state at room temperature. Without this wax, chocolate candy would melt in our hands before it ever reached our mouths.
Many beekeepers build artificial hives for bees out of wood. To preserve the wood hive and protect the bees from diseases, a paraffin and microcrystalline wax blend is used to coat the hive. Protecting bees from disease is very important these days, since many bee colonies are starting to die off.
Some high-end perfumes contain ambergris, which a waxy substance produced by sperm whales’ intestines. Ambergris helps retain perfume’s scent when it’s applied to your skin.
Creating a unique product that may need wax? We can help with a custom wax blend! Contact us.