What? Where is formaldehyde mentioned as being in toothpaste? You shoulda said antifreeze, at least that one was mentioned! Also, whatever. Also also, that’s why you don’t eat toothpaste. It’s why you don’t drink cologne, eye drops, hairspray, or a million other products you apply to your body, even inside and around your mucous membranes.
Harmlessly fake, I should point out. Unless you want to include among vile industrial toxins (as listed in your link): vegetable oil, whey, and…air.
Like you’d use toothpaste that dribbled out in a slurry one week after you cracked the tube the first time. Come on J, you ain’t that dude.
Which case is “this” case? You’ve got more than a few.
Hey, gueeeeess what? My chief amazement is what other people think of those books Bodanis wrote. Other people like…the guy whose article you linked to:
It’s the adult paranoids who must be kept away from this book at all costs.
That’s you, buddy. So to answer your question, I’m clearly arguing with you.
Wait wait, here’s another quote:
In fact, if there is an overall drawback to the book, it’s that Bodanis provides no footnotes to back up the amazing allegations he presents. It must all be taken on faith.
DON’T EAT TOOTHPASTE. I learned it when I was like 4 years old. Were you absent that day?
Maybe you should have read the last sentence:
However, brushing teeth with fluoride toothpaste is recommended by dentists as an important component of good daily dental hygiene and to fortify and strengthen teeth to prevent tooth decay.
So, Jason, does this mean you are forgoing all processed foods (cuz who knows what’s in them) and switching to an organic toothpaste that tastes like fluoride (after all, I’m sure the minty freshness is just a chemical effect)? Or is this more of an intellectual argument?
Yes, and said flouride is apparently the only ingredient that matters. Yet anyone you ask would say the point of toothpaste is that it gets stuff off or whitens teeth - the two things it doesn’t do.
Unilever again describing how yes, there’s formaldehyde in toothpaste.
Sarkus, I already use a flouride rinse - the only effective ingredient - so I figure I’ll try just my soniccare without any toothpaste. Apparently it has no effect, so why pay money for it? I have no idea why you guys are treating to treat this like a crackpot health issue. It has no plausible health benefit compared to the alternatives, so why on earth should you use it?
In the case of whey, yes, but in the case of replacing with the fat in “ice cream” with vegetable oils no. They’re not toxic of course, but things like the varying health impacts of types of oils and fats does come up. In general, call me crazy, but when I buy something labeled “ice cream” I would it to be what normal people describe with the term - almost entirely cow-derived, not sugar and vegetable oil. Maybe next up they can sell “meat” that’s actually 90% seaweed or something.
Jason: “Hey Phil, what’s the point of toothpaste?”
Phil: “Well, it generally has fluoride in it, which helps with cavities, and various stuff that makes your mouth/breath smell better, which is nice for, you know [low voice] kissing girls. And some of it claims to have tooth whitening ability, but not the stuff I generally use.”
===
Well now, I didn’t say it gets stuff off. I did talk about tooth whitening a little, but only for the toothpaste labeled as doing that. FWIW, I use basic Aqua-Fresh, cause stripes are cool…
Actually, you’re links don’t say toothpaste doesn’t whiten as much as it points out that it’s not really necessary for clean teeth and it requires harsh chemicals and is abrasive.
If you do switch to brushing with water and doing the fluoride rinse, it’ll be interesting to see how you react to having dingy teeth.
(as an aside, fluoride rinses do work, though I think the value is better when you are young than doing it as an adult. I did it for a year or two in grade school as part of a program and it significantly improved the strength of my teeth. I still don’t have a cavity. Part of that was due to my mother’s healthy cooking, but a close friend who also went through the program and who grew up on far less healthy foods also has few cavities.)
Regular toothpaste never claimed to whiten teeth. A recent line of toothpastes (most with baking soda - you know what that is, right?) are claiming to do that. Plain ol’ Crest never did. And how does toothpaste not “get stuff off” teeth when it contains fluoride and we all agree fluoride works?
OK, enough. This is the third goddamned time you clearly don’t read your own links or hope nobody else does. That link says:
Prior to being launched , all Unilever products undergo strict safety test procedures at Unilever Safety & Environmental Assurance Centre (SEAC) in the UK.
Used within the permitted level, it [Formaldehyde] is safe for human health. The use of formaldehyde as preservative prevents the growth of germs in the products, which can damage the product especially in warm climates. Preservative is therefore important to keep the product safe during storing.
Pepsodent contains formaldehyde of 0.04 % (0.016 % active), far below the permitted level.
All ingredients in Unilever products has been acknowledged and approved by BPOM, as also the content and level of formaldehyde in Unilever personal care products, which is far below the permitted level ,making them safe to use as well as effective.
You better come more correct than shit like that, dude. Your link totally ruined part of your argument, I hope you know that. Things contain stuff, film at 11.
Because it has no plausible health risks, either. And it amounts to pennies a use. And nobody really cares, because there’s really no point in caring.
Wait…you think ice cream doesn’t normally have sugar in it? Are you from fucking Mars, dude?
Well, in Jason’s defense the direct use of sugar wasn’t traditionally part of ice cream early on. Instead it was sweetened via the natural sugars and flavoring of various fruits. Later, sugar was added for other less sweet options, like vanilla. Of course now there are a lot of other things added to improve texture, how long the product lasts, etc.
That all said, you aren’t going to get what we would think of as “classic softserve” out of any basic old fashioned ice cream, at least in my experience.
I’m not saying it isn’t, but there is a problem with sugar being added to all kinds of things that you don’t even think would have it. And the things you expect to have it, have way more then they necessarily need unless you have a monstrous sweet tooth. Campbells Tomato soup has added sugar, for example. And an ice cream that just used fruit wouldn’t taste all that much less sweet than one with a few pounds of sugar added. Heck, you can usually reduce the sugar in most cookie recipes without much noticeable difference.
We don’t have a major problem with diabetes because people are eating too much fruit.
I want to know what all the ice cream hubbub is about. Read the package and it will tell you if you’re eating ice cream, or something like mellorine. There is very little you can put into your body in the US that you can’t get a strictly factual label for.
Yeah, that was my point. I don’t think Jason is saying there isn’t sugar in ice cream, even though his post was poorly worded. His whole argument has been about the addition of things that are not strictly required for the product, whatever it may be.
Obviously ice cream has sugar in it, I’m talking about the gap between what’d you expect in the ingredient list and what’s in there. Look at the first and last brands mentioned in this article - the last one is exactly what you’d expect - milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and some fruit. By contrast, check out the ingredient list on the first one:
Partially reconstituted lactose reduced whey protein concentrate (from milk), sugar, vegetable oil and hydrogenated vegetable oil, dextrose, whey powder, emulsifier: mono and diglycerides of fatty acids, stabilisers (guar gum, sodium alginate), flavourings, colours (curcumin, anatto).?
The sugar content is probably upped to cover up all the other shit they’re putting in there.
You insinuated I was wrong or making up the formaldehyde ingredient; I wasn’t, as I pointed out. I haven’t actually claimed its bad for you, because, well, I haven’t seen any evidence or argument that it is. Like Michael Pollan’s stuff on food, however, if they have to add that sort of thing to it I really have to wonder what the hell is going on in there. Apparently nothing in it is actively bad for you that anyone’s looked, but I find it hard to believe that the harsh non-food chemicals involved are any good for you.
Flouride does not remove things from teeth. Flouride bonds to damage in the enamel which could turn into cavites. It has no function as a cleaner agent. If flouride is the only useful function, it’s interesting that they don’t sell tubes of well, just flouride and the necessary carry alongs, which you’d imagine would be a lot cheaper.
Maybe I’m wildly wrong about this, and I can’t kind find public perception information online about toothpaste, but I thought toothpaste was chiefly useful to get your teeth clean of the stuff on them (it maybe doesn’t, compared to just water), that the whitening claims on toothpaste were accurate (they aren’t in most cases, and in the cases they are they’re misleading about what’s going on; as a bonus, the stuff like titanium dioxide is there to make them look temporarily whiter), and that the flouride was a helpful addon (this one is true). My indignant reaction to finding out that 2 of 3 things I assumed about toothpaste were wrong, and that almost all of what you pay is for useless ingredients, is apparently outrageous European neoludditism.
It doesn’t matter when a product makes misleading claims and violates people’s expectations on content as long as it’s cheap? The toothpaste apparently is fine, but the alternative junk they throw in low end foods does have a health impact.
It depends on what you’re talking about. You keep throwing formaldehyde out there because you know it will get a reaction, but it’s not like it’s a secret as to why it’s in those products. It’s a preservative, and that’s what a lot of additives are. Almost everything added to food (beyond the basic ingredients) is because of the need to preserve it so it doesn’t go bad before it reaches the consumer, to make it look better, or to make it taste better. That’s it. Pull that stuff out and you’ll have a higher rate of food poisoning and the packaged foods will look a lot less appetizing. Your choice.
No one is saying that some of that stuff, like sugar or added fat or tons of salt, isn’t bad for you. However, there is a difference between that and “scare tactic” nutritional reporting that mentions things like formaldehyde or some barely known preservative or color additive using a technical name, most of which are in foods in tiny amounts. For example, your ice cream ingredient list shows curcumin added as a coloring agent. Did you know that curumin is the main active ingredient of turmeric, a popular indian spice that has a number of health benefits? But hey, they shouldn’t have added that, right?
My point is that until you know what those additives are and why they are in there and how much of them are in there, you are jumping to the conclusion that they serve no purpose and must be bad for you if you don’t recognize them.
Hahahahaha, I love stuff like this, you can almost hear all the soccer moms standing on the brakes in their SUV’s. This is the kind of stuff my Mom calls me about to let me know not to give the kids anything but organics and filtered water. :)
OMG! Cheap ice cream brands use imitation vanilla?!? This is worse than Soylent Green! We’re all gonna die!!!
I mean, come on. Seriously. Also, while I’m sure that “Partially reconstituted lactose reduced whey protein concentrate” sounds really scary to you, why don’t we just call it by its layman’s name: powdered milk. And yes, cheap ice creams use other fats (like vegetable oil) as a replacement for some of the milk fat. I’m having a hard time feeling particularly outraged about something having vegetable oil in it, though.
