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.
Mint is still the predominant toothpaste flavor. Marvis, the stylish Italian toothpaste brand, started shaking things up in 1997 by adding ginger, licorice, anise, rhubarb, or a chocolate cherry mixture called Black Forest—like the cake—to the mint base.
Now, some toothpastes are aiming for delicacy and nuance. One of these, Boka, even had a smoothie at Erewhon, the Mint Condition Smile, modeled after its Ela Mint toothpaste. It was available last November until Christina Aguilera came along with her Favorite Things Smoothie, which promotes “inner beauty.”
It all strains credulity. But here we are. Dr. Chrystle Cu started rethinking toothpaste by upgrading the miserable grit used in her dental practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. She knew her patients hated getting their teeth cleaned—nothing personal—so she sourced 20 different flavors of paste and presented the array. “I thought, Why not make it fun? Why not make it like walking up to a gelato stand?” she says. “People’s faces would just light up, and that wasn’t the usual reaction.”
That inspired her and her artist sister to create Cocoshine toothpaste, in lychee, piña colada, and, yes, mint flavors. “We wanted our toothpaste to have this immediate yum factor,” she says. Last summer, the brand collaborated with the Oishii strawberry brand on a limited-edition berry-jam flavor that quickly sold out.
These new toothpastes don’t knock you out with their tang or fill your mouth with foam, and they take getting used to. “Because they don’t use sodium sulfate, they’re a lot less foaming,” says Dr. Victoria Sampson, a dentist and researcher in London who advises Boka. “Some people find them quite mild and a bit watery.”
A dentist once told me that the purpose of toothpaste is to get the brush in your mouth. It’s the spoonful of sugar-free sugar, but one that doesn’t cause decay. “What’s most important is that the toothbrush bristles get in contact with teeth,” says Dr. Cu. And sometimes a big flavor or a lot of bubbles can fool you into thinking you’ve done the job. “With excessive foam, you might not be brushing enough to remove plaque. You might feel like your teeth are immediately clean.”
Instead of fluoride, these toothpastes employ nano-hydroxyapatite, a re-mineralizing agent that mimics your teeth’s natural enamel. “It was actually developed for astronauts because, when they were in space, they wanted to use something they could swallow rather than spit out,” says Dr. Sampson. “It can also help people whose teeth are sensitive by filling up the holes in the enamel.” Nano-hydroxyapatite is new and doesn’t have as many studies as fluoride to support it, but some doctors are excited about its potential as an alternative to fluoride to protect teeth and the oral microbiome.
The people at Boka want brushing your teeth to feel like a spa treatment. Cocoshine wants to make it fun. No harm in trying.
Linda Wells is the Editor of AIR MAIL LOOK
