Edible, All Natural Toothpaste

Here in the household, we are mostly very aware of what we put in our bodies. Yes, we do have times we go on processed, junk food binges, but overall we try to go as natural as possible.  This includes making our own laundry detergent, using natural ingredients in my hair like coconut oil, and baking soda on our teeth.  So I was super excited to find an all natural toothpaste.  After reading reports how certain toothpaste companies were using plastic beads as scrubbers in their paste (um, EW), and that many of the ingredients are starting to be found to have side effects on our health (uh, NO THANK YOU), I was quite ready to find some alternatives!

First, I tried Toms natural toothpaste.  The taste was pretty good, you could tell it was actual peppermint oil, and not in any way synthetic.  I did find that I had to do some extra scrubbing to get the same feeling of "clean" that I got with the standard toothpaste. After thinking about it though, that feeling of clean is probably tantamount to scrubbing your face raw; feels clean, but is actually damaging with the excessive scrubbing.  My husband complained that his teeth felt fuzzy still, and that his breath didn't stay very fresh.  

Next, I found a local Utah company, Redmond, with a product called Earthpaste.  They had an option of peppermint or lemon. The lemon sounded interesting, so that's the one I 
walked away with.  It was a bit of a surprise when I found myself with a toothbrush full of brown, mud looking, paste.  Read the tube: No whitening or foaming agents. Well, that explains a lot.  Ok, let's give it a try.  It was a bit weird not having the paste foam up in your mouth right away, making you feel like you need to put more and more on your brush at first.  But, after getting used to it, you realize the paste is working, just have to put a little more elbow grease into the brushing than you might normally.  The taste was quite pleasant, tasting exactly like eating some lemon head candies, and made me feel like I should go brush my teeth because of the candy.  Then realizing that you didn't have candy, it was just the toothpaste. Win??? I still feel the need to use baking soda after just to have that "scrubbed raw" feeling in my mouth that I'm used to, but personally I like the Earthpaste, even though you spit brown liquid out of your mouth instead of white foam.  The taste is pleasant, I can pronounce and know what each of the 5 ingredients are, and with a little extra scrubbing, don't have that icky, fuzzy feeling left on my teeth. 

And as always, when in doubt, pull out the box of baking soda, mix with some coconut oil,and scrub away! 

So there is no need to put a bunch of chemicals in your mouth a few times a day to keep a healthy, clean mouth.  There are so many chemicals and pollutants in the rest of our daily lives, taking a couple easy steps to elliminate some of that is as easy as switching toothpaste.