Toothpaste and orange juice don’t mix.
What is it about toothpaste that transforms
the sweet flavor of orange juice into
something so atrociously bitter?
To get to the bottom of this phenomenon, we’re
going to have to cover a couple of bases here,
folks, and the first one is the sense of taste.
Your mouth is a powerful chemical sensor
equipped with around 10,000 individual
taste buds, with up to 100 individual
taste receptor cells each.
These taste buds are specifically programmed
to detect five different types of tastes:
sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami.
Taste is a chemical matching game of sorts.
When you eat a piece of food,
it distributes molecules and ions with
specific shapes throughout your mouth.
Each taste receptor cell is designed to match up
with a specific molecule and ignore all others.
Although this matching game is pretty accurate,
there are other factors that can affect the
way your mouth interacts with taste molecules.
Ok. So that’s enough for taste now.
Let’s talk about toothpaste.
Now you see, in the average tube of toothpaste,
you’re going to find four primary ingredients:
water, which adds body to the paste; abrasives,
which help remove plaque from teeth; fluoride,
which helps prevent cavities; and detergents,
the components that foam up when brushing.
The most commonly used detergent in toothpaste
is a compound called sodium lauryl sulfate
or SLS for short. SLS is used in tons
of different household products and although
SLS works wonders in producing suds, it
has been noted for its strange effects
on our mouth’s ability to taste. As it turns
out, SLS suppresses our sweet receptors and
destroys a compound in our mouths called phospholipids,
which inhibit our bitterness receptors.
This opens up a clearer pathway for bitter
molecules to reach your receptors.
This is the most widely accepted explanation for why
orange juice turns from this
(Image of person smiling with orange juice)
to this
(image of same person making the “bitter” face)
after you brush your teeth.
Like what you see here?
You should probably click that subscribe button.
Go ahead, you know you want to.
Also while you are here, check out why
beer gets skunked or why bacon smell so good.
And while you’re at it,
come back next for more chemistry goodness.