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If you have no idea why we’re pondering that question today, go brush your teeth real quick and grab a drink (orange juice, iced tea, beer—anything except water). Awful, isn’t it?
You can thank sodium laureth sulfate, also known as sodium lauryl ether sulfate (SLES), or sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) for ruining your drink, depending on which toothpaste you use. Both of these chemicals are surfactants – wetting agents that lower the surface tension of a liquid – that are added to toothpastes to create foam and make the paste easier to spread around your mouth (they’re also important ingredients in detergents, fabric softeners, paints, laxatives, surfboard waxes and insecticides).
While surfactants make brushing our teeth a lot easier, they do more than make foam. Both SLES and SLS mess with our taste buds in two ways. One, they suppress the receptors on our taste buds that perceive sweetness, inhibiting our ability to pick up the sweet notes of food and drink. And, as if that wasn’t enough, they break up the phospholipids on our tongue. These fatty molecules inhibit our receptors for bitterness and keep bitter tastes from overwhelming us, but when they’re broken down by the surfactants in toothpaste, bitter tastes get enhanced.
So, anything you eat or drink after you brush is going to have less sweetness and more bitterness than it normally would. Is there any end to this torture? Yes. You don’t need foam for good toothpaste, and there are plenty out there that are SLES/SLS-free. You won’t get that rabid dog look that makes oral hygiene so much fun, but your breakfast won’t be ruined.
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Comments (9)
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Side note: If you brush with Tom’s of Maine’s fennel toothpaste a lot of things taste sweet, especially water.
posted by Ben E. on 11-17-2008 at 12:29 am
Cool, and good to know. I doubt the natural toothpaste I use has that in it..but now I have to go check!
Also, there was a blog post by Mangesh a week or two back that talked about toothpaste in general (lots of comments suggesting toothpastes). Link is under my name.
posted by Dawn on 11-17-2008 at 12:30 am
I’ve tried to get away from all things containing SLS and SLES. I want my soap to be SOAP not detergent made from petrochemicals..eewww. Considering most “soaps” are really SLS and SLES which are detergents, this really gives a whole new meaning to “wash your mouth out with soap.” Although, I don’t think most mothers would take “But I brushed my teeth and it has the same chemical detergent in it as the handsoap,” as an acceptable alternative.
posted by nihil on 11-17-2008 at 9:43 am
Rembrandt has one that is for “canker sore sufferers” that doesn’t have any of that stuff in it. SLS and SLES are abrasive and I used to basically always have at least one canker sore, and they laster forever. Ever since I started using the Rembrandt I very rarely get them, and when I do they go away quickly.
posted by Leah on 11-17-2008 at 11:18 am
I think you only need to worry about this more than a little if you don’t rinse the toothpaste out of your mouth with a few mouthfuls of water after brushing…
posted by Jesse on 11-17-2008 at 12:16 pm
i looooooooooooooooove the taste of orange juice after i brush my teeth
posted by Victoria on 11-17-2008 at 2:09 pm
Wait, so this has nothing to do with the mintiness?? Wouldn’t orange juice taste just as bad with a breath mint in your mouth? …damn, now I have to go try.
posted by hullnoates on 11-17-2008 at 7:46 pm
Just thinking off the top of my head here — isn’t this how miracle fruit works too, by changing how the receptors on your tongue work?
If so, why don’t we mass produce that chemical, and get rid of high fructose corn syrup altogether?
posted by Mark on 11-19-2008 at 2:27 pm
to Mark:
This “chemical” called miraculin is actually a protein that that alters the taste receptors in the tongue so that sour foods taste sweet, but doesn’t have a taste of its own, so maybe it doesn’t classify as a sweetener.
BTW, they actually sell this in China.
posted by KaBAM! on 11-23-2008 at 7:44 am