Toothpaste: Synthetic Chemicals vs. Natural Ingredients

A couple of months ago, my husband and I stopped using toothpaste.

Well, we still clean our teeth, just not with the store-bought stuff that we have all used since we were about 2 years old.

Even though we don't swallow it, the ingredients in our toothpaste still get absorbed through our mouths. And with 1 1/2 to 2 minutes twice a day for a lifetime, that will sure add up.

Do you have any idea what's in your toothpaste besides fluoride? I took my old tube of AIM Cavity Protection Ultra Mint Gel and did some research on the ingredients.

Aside from Sodium Fluoride, everything in there is either for sweetening, thickening, emulsifying, lathering or coloring. And two of them (Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and PEG-8) could possibly be contaminated with 1,4-dioxane, which is a carcinogenic by-product made during the manufacturing process.

Here are two others who have written about common toothpaste ingredients:

What's in Toothpaste?
Do you know what's in your Toothpaste?

If you want to look up your own brand and its overall safety, you can look on either goodguide.com or cosmeticdatabase.com

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Fluoride

Before continuing, I want to note that I am going to do a separate post about fluoride. In doing my research on toothpaste, I discovered that fluoride is a huge topic and quite controversial.

I have learned a lot about fluoride that I didn't know before, and have concluded that I want nothing to do with it (unfortunately, I have no choice that it's in my tap water). For anyone to leave fluoride behind in their dental care, it needs to be done as an informed decision.

But I will move forward with this post with the understanding that fluoride is NOT essential in dental care.

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Going Natural

Because of all the synthetic chemicals in toothpaste - some more harmful than others - we decided to ditch the tube and make our own.

There are many ways to make your own - including using coconut oil - but we settled on baking soda and sea salt (with peppermint for flavor).

How are these ingredients effective?

Baking Soda: Make Your Own Natural Fluoride-Free Toothpaste

Baking soda is used for two reasons. First, it's a mild abrasive that provides a gentle cleansing. Second, it's alkaline. Being alkaline, baking soda can neutralize acids in your mouth that are often at the root of tooth decay. Baking soda also absorbs odors and helps produce sweet breath.

Sea Salt: Is Your Toothpaste Toxic?

According to Dentist Robert Nara, in his book, How to Become Dentally Self Sufficient, using real sea salt in your oral hygiene routine can treat or prevent most tooth and gum issues. Real sea salt contains a lot of trace minerals, many of which your teeth need to stay strong. Direct application of these minerals can benefit teeth and gums. Regular table salt does not work in the same manner and is not recommended for brushing.

When we first started using our homemade toothpaste, it took me several days to get used to the saltiness. We even reduced the salt in our second batch, but realized that it wasn't working as effectively. So we knew the salt was necessary.

After switching to the baking soda/salt, my mouth has felt fresher and cleaner after brushing. My teeth also feel smoother and the fresh breath seems to last longer. I certainly prefer this method to commercial toothpaste. I don't ever see going back.

Originally, I worked off of this recipe, but I have tweaked each batch until I got it how we like it. So of course, you may do some tweaking as well.

Cookie Monster fork used for scooping out our homemade toothpaste.

Homemade Toothpaste

1/3 cup baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1-2 tsp peppermint extract (or peppermint essential oil, but only a few drops)
4-5 tsp water

Mix ingredients and put into a container with a lid (a small glass jar/container would be ideal). Use some sort of utensil/stick to scoop it out and apply to your toothbrush.

Homemade Sunbutter

We've been avoiding peanuts and tree nuts in our house for almost 2 years since finding out about our son's allergy. The one thing that I was the saddest to part with was peanut butter.

An easy replacement for peanut butter is sunbutter (it does taste different...so it's not an exact replacement). The jars at the store are expensive, so for awhile now I've been making my own.

Even if you don't have a peanut allergy in the house, I'd still encourage you to try making this. It's a delicious addition to a snack. It goes well with apples, bananas, celery, crackers, toast (with or without jelly), and of course a sunbutter and jelly sandwich.

When I make a batch of this, it doesn't last long because my kids just eat it up!

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When I first started making this, I was going off of this recipe. I've adapted the proportions a bit, so I'm going to re-post it according to how I make it.

I buy my sunflower seeds from our local shop that sells mostly dried goods (The Pantry Shoppe). I buy them shelled and unsalted.

Also, all the recipes I've come across use a food processor for making sunbutter. If you make it in a blender and it works, comment and let us know.

Sunbutter

2 cups sunflower seeds (shelled and unsalted)
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp honey
4 Tbsp olive oil

Toast the seeds:

Spread the sunflower seeds out onto a large baking sheet. Bake them in the oven at 275 for 20-25 minutes (you don't want them too toasted, or they will dry out too much). Let the seeds cool completely.

10 Minutes in the Food Processor:

Combine the seeds and salt in the food processor. Let it run for about 5 minutes, stopping to scrape the sides down as needed.

At this point, the oils in the seeds have started to come out and it gets thicker and moister. Now add in the honey.

Let it go longer, continuing to stop and mix it up if it builds up on the sides. After about 7 to 9 minutes from when you started, add in the olive oil. Let it run for another 2 or 3 minutes. It should be really creamy.

Store in a container in the fridge. It will thicken a little, but it shouldn't get completely solid (should still be spreadable).

The FDA and Triclosan

Back in February, I wrote a blog post about hand soap. It was a long post, describing in detail the toxic ingredients contained in most hand soaps, one of which is triclosan.

Triclosan is used for its antibacterial properties. But it also has harmful effects on the human body, mainly that it's an endocrine disruptor.

According to Wikipedia, endocrine disruptors "are chemicals that at certain doses, can interfere with the endocrine (or hormone system) in mammals. These disruptions can cause cancerous tumors, birth defects, and other developmental disorders. Any system in the body controlled by hormones, can be derailed by hormone disruptors.

Skin Deep's Cosmetic Database gives triclosan a score of 7 (10 being the worst). Reasons given for the score are that it's an irritant, an endocrine disruptor, and has organ system toxicity. But to top it all off, when triclosan is mixed with the chlorine in tap water, it forms chloroform gas. The Cosmetic Database gives chloroform a score of 10 and it's "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen."

You can read more about triclosan here: PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS: Triclosan Comes under Scrutiny

Bottom line: DON'T USE ANY PRODUCTS CONTAINING TRICLOSAN

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The FDA

Most Americans are probably under the assumption that all products and ingredients on the store shelves have been thoroughly tested for safety and given a seal of approval by the FDA. Because they are certainly watching our for our health, right?

Well, yesterday I came across an article on the home page of naturalnews.com:

FDA finally gets around to conducting safety review on toxic antibacterial chemical triclosan, already in consumer products for four decades

I encourage you to read the whole article, but I will take a few excerpts from it:

After more than 40 years of complete inaction in evaluating the potential side effects of the antibacterial chemical triclosan, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is finally getting around to conducting a review of this pervasive chemical additive, which is now found in more than 75 percent of all conventional hand soaps. 

A 2007 (University of Michigan) review found that, based on independent data compiled from 30 different academic sources, triclosan is no more effective at preventing illness or reducing bacteria on hands than plain hand soap. "At this point, it's just looking like a superfluous chemical."

...the FDA never actually approved the chemical for use in consumer products. In fact, a draft review compiled by the agency back in 1978 stated that triclosan was "not generally recognized as safe and effective."

Even though it lacked the proper safety data to do so, the FDA did, in fact, approve the use of triclosan in Colgate Total toothpaste back in 1997. But to this day, the agency has never shown that triclosan actually works as claimed, and its website even admits that the chemical still has not been shown to work in soap as an effective sanitizer.

Going back again to the Cosmetic Database, triclosan is in 91 of their products. Good guide has it in over 450 products, including in hand soap, hand sanitizer, body wash, facial cleanser, bar soap, toothpaste, moisturizer, dish soap, lipstick, eye shadow and many others.

Thanks for keeping us safe, FDA. Keep up the good work.

Homemade Alfredo Sauce

Our kids love noodles. And when we need a break from the red sauce or our butternut squash pasta sauce, we go for the Alfredo.

Until now, we've always relied on the jar. But we finally decided to make our own and it was delicious. Sean worked from a recipe on allrecipes.com:

Quick and Easy Alfredo Sauce

I'll let you get the recipe from there. We had only two minor changes, listed below.

Homemade Alfredo sauce with sauteed onion and zucchini

The recipe calls for a 1/2 cup of butter. To make it healthier, we substituted olive oil (about 2 tablespoons).

Also, from our local farm stand, we are able to sometimes get white sweet potatoes. We baked one, pureed it and added it to the sauce. It gets hidden in there pretty well, and it gives the kids a little extra nutrition. 

Partially Hydrogenated Oils

When you're looking through an ingredient list on food packaging, you may shrug off any vegetable oils as being fine, like soybean oil. But when it has the words "partially hydrogenated" in front of it, you need to put it back on the shelf.

What is a hydrogenated oil?

Any oil can be hydrogenated, either partially or fully. A majority of the time in processed foods, they use soybean oil (which most likely is genetically engineered).

The process of hydrogenation is to take these oils in their natural state and raise them to very high temperatures and then force hydrogen gas into them at high pressure.

This changes the consistency from liquid to solid or semi-solid.

Why hydrogenate?

Companies prefer this type of oil for a few reasons.

First, it's cheap (and that always wins). It also prolongs the shelf life of the product, enhances the flavor, and creates a desirable texture in baked goods.

Why should you avoid it?

One of the main reasons to avoid this type of oil is that once it goes through this process, it now contains trans fats.

We have all heard that trans fats are bad, but do we specifically know why?

According to the article Soybean Oil: One of the Most Harmful Ingredients in Processed Foods, these unnatural, man-made trans fats are linked to:

• Cancer
• Diabetes
• Decreased Immune Function
• Reproductive Problems
• Chronic health problems such as obesity, asthma, auto-immune disease, and bone degeneration
• Heart disease
• Increasing "bad" cholesterol, while lowering "good" cholesterol

A list like that makes me want to stay far away from it. This type of oil is widely used in processed foods, which makes getting large doses quite easy for the typical American.

Watch out for the loop-hole.

Since 2006, the FDA has required trans fats to be listed on the label. But they also allowed any product with up to a half a gram to be rounded down to zero trans fats.

So what some companies have done is to get their serving size down small enough that it is half a gram or less.

If you see a serving size of 5 chips, or 1 cookie, then you know they're probably hiding something.

***

With hydrogenated oils having so many benefits to the manufactures, they have been used in thousands of food products. Don't let them bully you into eating them. Pick products without these oils...or better yet, grab a carrot :)

For more reading:

The health dangers of trans fats have been known for decades, yet food companies still poison customers with hydrogenated oils

What in the world are we eating?

It's an obvious statement to say that in general, Americans have a diet consisting mostly of highly processed foods. We hear all the time about things that are bad for us: high fructose corn syrup, genetically modified or engineered ingredients, trans fats, preservatives, pesticides. We hear about so many things causing cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, etc.

We hear all this, but we're still eating tons of processed foods without much thought behind it. Some people may truly not care what they put in their bodies, while others pay a great deal of attention to it and only eat "real" food.

A majority will fall in the middle somewhere: caring about their health, but at the same time probably fooled by the food industry, causing them to make poor food choices.

Advertising and food labels can be terribly misleading, even downright lying. Most of the options laid out in front of us in the supermarkets are "foods" boxed up with a list of 25 ingredients, leading people to believe that eating this way is our only option. We also have a false sense of security believing that the FDA is looking out for our health (I don't believe they are) and that if it passes the test and is on the shelf, then it can't possibly harm us.

I think that the general public is vastly uninformed about what they are eating. I have only begun in the past few years to pay very close attention to what I eat, and I'm upset that it took me this long to care.

The message has seemed to get out that we need to always check the ingredient list before buying something. The problem is, even when you glance over the list, you're probably only going to know what a handful of the ingredients actually are. So you recognize a few things, ignore the unpronounceables and put it in your cart anyway.

Not many of us take the time to learn what these ingredients are: what they are made from, how they are made, and what health affects they can have.

What I'm going to do (maybe weekly?) is take a common ingredient that I - and probably most people - don't know a thing about and elaborate on it. I want to learn right along with you. And even if you don't remember all the details of what I write, maybe the next time you see it listed, you'll know that it's generally a bad thing and needs to be avoided.

First up will be Partially Hydrogenated Oils...

*note: the ultimate goal should be to stop buying processed foods altogether. But I realize cutting them out 100% is a hard thing to do. I haven't even gotten there yet, so let's at least be educated on what's out there.

Going Shampoo-Free

I've talked a lot about ways to clean around the house using non-toxic ingredients, but I haven't gotten too much into personal care products. Today I want to get into the topic of shampoo.

When I started making things for myself about 4 or 5 months ago, I knew I would get around to shampoo eventually. I was more focused on replacing my cleaners and detergents. But one night in mid-February, I sat down with my shampoo bottle - a brand I've used for years - and looked up some of the unrecognizable ingredients. I was horrified and stopped using it immediately.

Shampoo is in no way an exception to all the toxic chemicals that the personal care product industry uses. These synthetic chemicals coat our hair to make it look "shiny and beautiful," but at the expense of allowing these harmful ingredients to enter our bodies.

Here's an article from naturalnews.com:

Popular Shampoos contain toxic chemicals linked to nerve damage

...it may surprise you to learn that manufacturers can put practically any chemical they want into shampoos, even if it is a hazardous chemical listed in the RTECS database of toxicity and even if it is considered a toxic waste chemical by the EPA. The FDA allows all sorts of chemicals to be used in these products, including chemicals that are known carcinogens and that contribute to liver failure and nervous system disorders. How's that for protecting public health?

 I found another article about shampoo at mercola.com:

Do You Know What's in Your Shampoo?

When you put shampoo or conditioner onto your scalp, the 20 blood vessels, 650 sweat glands, and 1,000 nerve endings soak in the toxins.

...when toxins are absorbed through your skin, they bypass your liver and enter your bloodstream and tissues -- with absolutely no protection whatsoever.

The article also lists 5 common - and toxic - shampoo ingredients. See if your bottle contains these.

For me, knowing that the chemicals in my shampoo bottle are doing some definite harm, I had no problem turning to a natural homemade solution...

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What to use instead?

*First I want to note that any time you transition from commercial shampoo to anything natural/homemade, your hair will have to adjust. Shampoo over-strips your hair of its oils, so your scalp has to compensate. Now you have to train your scalp to slow down the oil production. The transition time is different for everyone, but for me, it took 3 to 4 weeks.

For the first month after ditching the bottle, I used a recipe I found online that used 6 natural ingredients. It worked okay, but I wasn't in love with it. It also wasn't as inexpensive as I wanted, so I looked for something different.

I started reading about the "no-poo" movement (as in no shampoo). I'm not sure when this got started, but the basic idea is to clean your hair without any commercial products. Mostly, this involves using baking soda to clean your hair and apple cider vinegar as a "conditioning" rinse.

Here are some others who have written about it:

Info: Shampoo Free

Shampoo-Free: Why and How

Going no-'poo?

So I've been using diluted baking soda followed by diluted apple cider vinegar for about a month and it's working quite well. I have tweaked my proportions a few times, but I think I'm settled on what's working best for me.

I recently found the article listed above (Info: Shampoo Free) that helped me clarify what proportions I should be using and why using too much baking soda - which I was - was not giving me great results (too much can dry your hair out and make it frizzy).

The article also gives some info about the history of shampoo, along with tips if the baking soda/ACV rinse isn't working very well. It's worth a read through.

So here's one way to go 'poo free:

Baking Soda "Shampoo"

1 cup water
1 Tbsp baking soda

Mix into a squeeze bottle. Shake up before each use. After applying to hair, let it sit for about a minute before rinsing off.

Apple Cider Vinegar Conditioning Rinse

8oz water
2 Tbs Apple Cider Vinegar

I prefer to mix this in a small spray bottle (can also be kept in any kind of container that pours or squirts).

Use minimally. Too much can leave your hair greasy. When rinsed, your hair should not smell like vinegar.

***

Everyone's hair is different, so I am not convinced that this will work well for every single person. But there are many suggestions out there as to how to make your own shampoo so that you can quit buying from the store. A simple Google search should give you many, many options (one being to use castile soap: Use Natural Liquid Castile Soap for Safe and Wonderful Homemade Shampoos)

Just find what works for you. Happy hair cleaning :)

Corn Salad

We had this as part of our dinner a couple nights ago. It was Erin's idea, but unfortunately the picky eater that she is, she ended up not liking it. But I thought it was delicious.

It's a great side dish for a summer meal, especially next to something off the grill...

***

Corn Salad

Veggies:

Corn
Peas
Grape Tomatoes
Bell Peppers
Cellery

Dressing:

1-2 Tbs balsamic vinegar
1-2 Tbs olive oil

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1-2 tsp dried basil

 

Mix up and serve cold.

Glass Cooktop Cleaner (Natural)

Back in February, our whole family was sick with one or more of the following: a cold, an ear infection, pink eye, bronchitis, or strep throat. So when we had all gotten better, it was time to clean and disinfect the whole house.

When we got to the kitchen stove (glass top), I wanted to find an alternative to our Cerama Bryte Cooktop Cleaner.

(I tried to find out what the ingredients are in this, but most of it is "trade secret." What they do disclose are harmless ingredients - but what are they hiding with the rest of it? At the end of this data sheet, they classified it as "toxic material.")

In my online search, I found different suggestions for cleaning with natural ingredients, including baking soda, vinegar, dish soap and a combination of them. I've been experimenting with different variations and have found what works best, at least for me.

Note: I have found that it's much easier to clean up recent stains than to work on something that's been there a while. Even the Cerama Bryte didn't work very well on old stains. So it's best to get things up as soon as you can.

Natural Glass Cooktop Cleaner

My first step is to get up all the loose crumbs and wipe it as clean as possible with a wet rag.

Then I sprinkle some baking soda and work on the dark stains with the rag. This usually gets up most of it (again, not so well on old stains).

When you need a little extra cleaning power, put down a little liquid castile soap (I assume dish soap would work too) along with the baking soda. The two together seem to work a little better than just the baking soda alone.

Wiped with a wet rag.

Cleaned with baking soda.

Beer Can Chicken

This past weekend, we had beer can chicken as our main meat dish for our Easter dinner. I took pictures so that I could write about it, in case any of my readers didn't know how to make the most tender chicken you've ever had.

It's not complicated at all. It does help to have a stand (pictured to the right), but it's not necessary. The first one or two times we made it, we didn't have our stand yet.

Aside from that, you just need a whole chicken, a can of beer and some spice rub.

Beer Can Chicken

The can of beer. You can use any beer you want. Better beer doesn't make better tasting chicken, so use the cheap stuff (we used Miller Highlife this time).

You only need the can half full, so either dump out half or drink it. Poke a few holes in the top half of the can. Put some of the spice rub (whatever you're using) into the can.

The chicken. Take the whole chicken and get it onto the stand. Rub it down with olive oil and then the spice rub.

Bake it. Preheat oven to 350. Bake it for an hour and fifteen to an hour and forty-five (depending on how big and how cold...). 

Ready for the spice rub (or a puppet show)

Bake em'

All done!

Tender, juicy, delicious chicken!