don't think any of those toothpastes exist here, then again i'm not a toothpaste connoisseur like you ;) I only know the "mainstream" brands. but organic/natural/whole food product is becoming more trendy here, i'm sure there some type of hipster toothpaste at some obscure grocery store that I probably haven't heard of lol
well, the point is, the potentially toxic ingredients that may be in toothpaste are only ingested minimally, and any trace amounts that enter your body are filtered out by your kidneys and effectively shouldn't do any harm to your body. Not to say toothpaste poisoning isn't a valid concern though...better safe than sorry right?
no evidence? go over to pubmed, and there's a myriad of peer-reviewed studies that show fluoride has a positive effect on dental health. not to say there isn't a safer, just as effective alternative though. also while this is mostly aesthetic, fluoride may help prevent teeth yellowing. it depends on the social class and area, but I would say 80% of people have relatively white teeth, atleast in young-middle aged groups. genetics surely plays a factor. also, not sure if this is a custom here, but I brush my teeth after breakfast-so there will be less sugary residue that can ferment on my teeth throughout the day? just a guess.
I think Stevia was illegal here at one point too- so there could be more profit made in artificial sweetners, probably more or less from the same reason it was banned on your side of the globe. while it is logical that natural > artificial, sometimes an artificial replacement is easier and more effective to synthesize opposed to isolating the natural ingredient from a crop, and therefore less costly. It may also taste better too, but that's largely subjective. the latter plays a huge role in reverse, I think there's a mental influence that eating something that's advertised as "natural and healthy" makes it taste better.
i think i knew that bit about silk armor, thanks to RPG games ;) it probably would weigh you down weigh less too, or would the silk have to be ultra concentrated?
Licorice toothpaste!? that's even a bigger WTF than pomegranate...but alas, it seems to be getting numerous solid reviews throughout the internet
S3C
ahh, so the pomegranate toothpaste is just a household thing. still sounds quite unusual to me though.
well it's not like you actually swallow the toothpaste. and considering that you wash your mouth thoroughly after cleaning your teeth and your body excretes fluoride out- nearly eliminates the threat of harmful amount of fluoride accumulating in your body and causing fluoride poisoning. tea leaves have fluoride too, you know. but, the U.S. also fluoridates the water (in the majority of Europe I believe this is illegal?). and i'd entertain a guess that the general health is better in Sweden than the U.S. (for reasons besides fluoride issues) so you may be on to something ;)
i prefer just pure cane sugar over (natural) sugar substitutes. unfortunately the U.S. has invested bajillions of dollars into high fructose corn syrup, which is complete crap. one time, I was craving twizzlers candy, ate the whole bag in one sitting. Didn't really pay attention to the fact that it was "sugar free". also I didn't know that sorbitol was a potent laxative. The digestive results weren't pretty.
ozone in toothpaste!? i admit I had a WTF moment there; how'd you think of that? but i googled it, seems like it does exist (it was an out of stock item on some hippie natural earth food website lol, not to say thats a bad thing), there's even a report done by the NCBI, so it is a legitimate idea...interesting, never would have thought of that.
i love fruits, it's just that when its combined with toothpaste it becomes one of hell's inventions. i suppose though, it may taste completely different with the alternative toothpastes you are referring too.
Cyberdevil (Updated )
Yupp, it's probably a relatively unknown brand, if you-re interested: Dr. Organic, A .Vogel, Weleda and Urtekram are a few we commonly use.
Of course you'd try not to swallow anything, but some of it'll probably always make its way down. The fact that fluoride is good for your teeth is a bit of a myth though, even if it doesn't damage the body there's no evidence that it really prevents tooth decay, it's crazy that it's so widely used and accepted and favored by most dentists. We have a built-in filter for tap water as well (they do fluoridate the water here, a little), but apart from fluoride there are other dubious ingredients in normal toothpaste, don't recall the names but they usually have something to polish the teeth that can harm the enamel if you use too much/brush too hard. Colgate used to have Triclosan in their toothpaste, but maybe that's been taken away now. Didn't know about the tea leaves, interesting!
General health may be maybe better here, but for teeth specifically it's not so good, mostly because dentistry here is pretty oldskool, the government doesn't embrace progress at all, we're fortunate they use water with their drills. So far, I don't think I've seen any Americans without white teeth. How common is it?
Same here, but in products like chewing gum it can be useful with something less sugary, xylitol is anti-bacterial too (also midly laxative, but that's not noticeable in such small doses), don't know about Stevia. Haha, so sorbitol is a laxative too! I'll keep that in mind.
An interesting thing is that Stevia was made illegal here in Sweden when Aspartame made its grand debut a few years back. The tides are turning now though, fortunately. It should be logical that natural > artificial in most areas, pretty much everything synthetic is based on some natural ingredient, and it usually doesn't have the same side-effects as the synthetic alternative. Did you know you can make bulletproof vests out of silk instead of Kevlar? It's much more resistant, just not so profitable.
Oh, so it does exist already! Hmm, wonder if they'll accept international orders... that's one thing that probably won't make it here in at least a decade. Ozone seems like a promising alternative to regular dentistry, great way to both prevent/fix any teethy issues. Can't wait to try it...
Mmm, might be. Now that I think about it, Pomogranate is probably the only fruit toothpaste I've tasted, more usual flavors: liquorice, salt, aloe, fennel... that's all I can think of.