If you don’t feel fully awake until you’ve blasted your mouth with mint and hit your central nervous system with caffeine, you’re not alone. I’ll add completing The New York Times’s Spelling Bee to my list of necessities. From there, I can begin to function.
That burst of minty freshness may be ready for an update. It’s been around since the early 1900s, when Pepsodent introduced a paste enhanced with mint extract at a time when few people brushed their teeth. Within five years, thanks to an ad campaign that promised to remove film, reduce decay, and create a movie-star smile, nearly 60 percent of Americans were brushing their teeth with Pepsodent. Consumers came to associate the minty tingle with the toothpaste’s brightening, freshening action.
