Colors on toothpaste tubes: Don’t let them fool you!

Not many people are concerned with the type of toothpaste they use but if you are interested on your dental health you might have come across tons of dental tips and rumors about things you can do to get white teeth, recipes for toothaches and even alternatives for dental procedures. One particular information we are going to talk about today is the rumor that there is a hidden code on your toothpaste tube. We have found this image in the web and we need to start explaining everything wrong with it.

First of all… all toothpaste is chemical. No question about it. People seem to forget everything in nature is a chemical. Even when some claim they use only baking soda because is “chemical free” they don’t know soda is in fact NaHCO3 or Sodium hydrogen carbonate. On our previous blog post we actually talked about the alternative uses of toothpaste and its ingredients, chiefly aluminium hydroxide and calcium carbonate.

 

The chart above is completely bogus. Medicinal toothpaste does not have a color mark either. Here is an example of an specialized paste medicine for gums:

 

Here’s the pic of a regular toothpaste:

Beyond the medicinal ingredients, the one real difference between the two is the package. That’s what it all boils down to. The machines that make the plastic tubes require a visual cue to know where to cut and seal the tube for packaging. It generally needs to be a darker color than the rest for the computer to recognize it. That’s why you will generally see the color strips over white, so the contrast makes it easier to identify.
Here you can see the process of production of a toothpaste. You can tell the machine is using the dark color as reference to make it face the right direction through the production line (around 3:33).

The more you know! Share this post with your friends and let them know the truth about the colors on the tubes. Make sure your facts are confirmed before sharing photos with rumors like the above. Is very important to fight off  disinformation in any health field; someone’s health could be hanging in the balance! Cancun Cosmetic Dentistry will always do our best to give you real and accurate scientific information to look after your dental health. Let us know if you have any other question!

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