Home-made toothpaste

Initially published on 21/09/2011

Have you ever seen the movie Recipes for disaster? This is about a finnish family who tries to live without petroleum and products made of it: no more gasolin, plastic package (probably the hardest part), etc.

The problem is that petroleum is a very small part of the picture and some efforts they make, like using biofuel or buying some kind of carbon offset to compensate their carbon-emitting electricity, are counterproductive.

The worse to me is still the father's conclusion: "it's impossible to live without petroleum because you cannot replace toothpaste"...

WRONG!!

And maybe he thought he was only talking about plastic but the paste itself contains petrochemicals. Another good reason to prove him wrong.

Our current toothpastes did not exist a century ago. They actually appeared at the same time as dietary excesses and food with a high rate of sugar. Extra fluor toothpastes were made to compensate this bad diet.

But if you eat normally (= healthy) and avoid snack between meals, you already have all the fluor you need to fight caries: saliva contains some as well as other minerals (from your diet). When you have eliminated the last food residues and if you leave it enough time to do its jobs (no snacks!), you don't need extra fluor which can be unhealthy at high quantity.

The recipe I found, which is more a powder than a paste, stimulate salivation and is abrasive (slighly) enough to eliminate impurities.

The recipe I use

26g Calcium carbonate (very soft abrasive)

3g liquorice (lakris) powder (gives a good taste)

1 g thin salt (activate salivation)

2 drops of peppermint essential oil (taste, antibacterial)

 Take some powder with a slightly wet brush.

You might be able to buy calcium carbonate in pharmacy. You may replace it by natron (sodium bicarbonate) or clay but be careful: it is much more abrasive for the teeth so you must not use it more than 3 times a week.

Liquorice powder can be replaced by other plants powder. Some have interesting properties for this purpose, like sage, Iris root, chamomile, lemon balm, calendula. The online shops www.crearome.se and www.sunvita.no have interesting choices. You could also buy fresh thyme (exotic food shop at Tromsø for example), make it dry, and reduce it into powder. Thyme alone also work as toothpaste. It is a powerful disinfectant.

BE CAREFUL with essential oils. You can replace mint by others (clove, lemon...) but always check if it can be ingested (just in case). Children and pregnant women SHOULD NOT USE a tooth powder with essential oils.

You can actually use (good quality) salt alone as toothpaste. Make it melt entirely in water so it does not damage your teeth.

If you keep buying regular toothpaste after that, my tips to you is "use less than you're used to". It works perfectly fine with the size of a pea ; children should not be given more than that.

To finish with, I just wanted to comment on my toothbrush I bought in France: it's a refillable one. You just change the head and save so much plastic! Too bad it's not sold in Scandinavia yet. But Sweden in working on it.

Check Monte-bianco.se on their facebook page.

Source: Raffa ; If you speak French, I recommend it!