CHICAGO — Here's a juicy thought to chomp on. What if the simple act of chewing gum helped you keep your weight down, reduce stress, improve focus — or all three?

Sure, a cynic might reply, just as eating pizza raises your IQ and chocolate-chip cookies make you skinny.

Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co., though, is so hopeful of the possibilities that it is launching a multimillion-dollar, multiyear effort to prove them. Citing "emerging research" that suggests chewing may be beneficial, the gum maker has created the Wrigley Science Institute, consisting of an international advisory panel of scientists and research experts who are studying the sticky matter.

Surinder Kumar, Wrigley's chief innovation officer, says the 115-year-old company has been hearing from consumers for decades about chewing's benefits — some of them, he contends, "just plain common sense." Now it is looking for scientific proof to back up the anecdotal evidence.

The company hopes the results, which won't be known for another year or so, will give people a whole new reason to chew gum — any gum, although as the world's No. 1 gum purveyor and with 63 percent of the U.S. market, Wrigley clearly would reap the biggest revenue rewards.

Wrigley is so confident of a favorable outcome that it is going public with the effort and already has compiled the earlier, preliminary research in a glossy 48-page booklet with the upbeat title, "The Benefits of Chewing."

The Chicago-based company says that the scientists remain independent and their work, which is being carried out at laboratories elsewhere and not at Wrigley's new research center, is to be published in peer-review journals.

"We do have very strong reason to believe that chewing has significant benefits that will bear out," Kumar said. "We don't know which ones will bear out, but there are some benefits that will bear out for sure."

Current studies are looking into three areas of potential benefits, the company says: