Toothpaste – A Fundamentally Flawed Product

Take as the premise for this post the fact that orange juice tastes terrible if consumed shortly after brushing with any mint-flavored toothpaste. If you are unsure if that’s true, go brush your teeth, drink some orange juice, and come back. If you want to know why this bad taste occurs, I encourage you to read this explanation on HowStuffWorks.com.

Now, I like clean teeth as much as the next guy and I certainly believe that brushing with toothpaste is a good step towards keeping your teeth clean. Furthermore, I am a fan of mint-flavored toothpastes (possibly because the flavor is so pervasive, but I bet it is so pervasive because a lot of people like it).

What I want to know is, why must toothpaste make orange juice taste so bad? Considering the fact that most people brush right after waking up, and prior to breakfast, it seems obvious that you would not want a product, designed for morning use, that combines so terribly with a popular breakfast drink. Why do we put up with such bad products? Why can’t toothpaste makers create a toothpaste that doesn’t make OJ taste so bad? Makes me wonder what other product flaws we live with every day that are just waiting for someone to solve them.

6 comments

  1. Don’t drink orange juice? Brush after drinking the juice? Try “Viadent” toothpaste, which is a whole other breed of taste and texture?

    some plausible solutions…

  2. This response comes way late in relation to when this was posted, but I have been thinking about this recently. Why is it that you get the bad taste only by brushing your teeth than drinking oj and never when you drink oj than brush your teeth? You can have the oj flavor aftertaste in your mouth when you brush your teeth but you do not get the same reaction. I wonder why.

  3. @ Bridget

    Thanks for the comments Bridget, and please feel free to comment at any time.

    I believe the reason that the order of the events matters is because the OJ does not really stick around in your mouth, whereas the toothpaste gets stuck down between your teeth for a while due to its “paste-like” nature. Additionally it could have to do with the ratio, maybe you can only use a little toothpaste to a lot of OJ to have this effect.

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