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Thirteen Acidic Fruits And How They Affect Your Teeth

Wow, grapes are as acidic as grapefruit. Maybe that is why my teeth and gums were irritated this week, after me eating green grapes that I had bought.

.

My teeth have erosion along the gumline.

For a while in the past, I used a Tom's of Maine (brand) children's anticavity fluoride mouth rinse ("Silly Strawberry" flavor) after brushing my teeth in the evening, hoping that would help fortify my tooth enamel and make my teeth less sensitive. I think I mixed the mouth rinse half and half with water to cut down on the sweetness, but other than that the flavor was nice.

After using that bottle up, I tried a different brand - TheraBreath for Kids "Anti Cavity Oral Rinse", "Gorilla Grape" flavor. OMG, that one was WAY sweeter than the other one. Even cut down with water, it was still very sweet. So I never used much of that bottle.

Both brands are sweetened with xylitol which is good for your teeth. But still, I don't like a sweet taste in my mouth when I go to bed, and rinsing out the mouth rinse with water negates some of the benefit of the fluoride. (Yes, I know many people think fluoride is actually bad for you, but considering that I've only had one cavity so far in my life, I'm still of the opinion that it works well for me.)

So this year I bought another bottle of the Tom's of Maine rinse. But I was surprised to see from its ingredient list that it contains actual fruit juices (strawberry, pineapple, orange, lemon, mango) rather than (or in addition to) fruit flavor. All those fruits are acidic, and I was surprised that any company would put acids into a mouth rinse, when acid is bad for teeth. Then I saw that the TheraBreath includes citric acid in its ingredients too.

I wondered if the amount of juice and acid was low enough not to make much impact, or if other ingredients in the mouth rinses counteracted the acidity of the juice.

I tested the Tom's mouth rinse by pouring a small amount of it into a glass and adding baking soda. It fizzed! I tried the same thing with the TheraBreath and Qiao's old Listerine. They all got somewhat cloudy when the baking soda dropped in. But the TheraBreath and Listerine did not fizz. Only Tom's of Maine produced visible bubbles.





Acidic Mouthwashes Are Eroding Your Teeth - lists the pH of various popular mouthwashes. Per this list, Tom's of Maine is the worst, but Listerine isn't good either.

The erosive effects of some mouthrinses on enamel

Mouthwash Is Bad For You: 4 Better Alternatives
darkoshi: (Default)
I went to Kroger today, and the self-checkout had an option for no receipt (which I selected). There was no option for an emailed receipt. So after getting home, I logged into my Kroger account (based on the Kroger card) to check, and it has a "My Purchases" page. It lists each time I've shopped there with my card, listing everything purchased, along with the prices and even pictures of the items. Pretty neat. I hadn't noticed that the last time I logged in, when I was checking out the digital coupons which they now advertise sometimes on the shelves.

In 2011, Kroger phased out BPA from their receipts as well as their store-brand cans:
https://www.thekrogerco.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Statement-BPA.pdf

But they switched to BPS in the receipts, which is just as bad:
https://www.ecocenter.org/healthy-stuff/reports/receipt-paper-study-2018

As of 2016, 62% of their store-brand cans still had BPA:
https://saferchemicals.org/retailers/kroger/
darkoshi: (Default)
The risky chemical lurking in your wallet / New research finds that the BPA in cash register receipts can be absorbed through skin. (article from 2014)

Explainer: Store receipts and BPA (from 2017)
“When people talk about polycarbonate bottles, they talk about nanogram quantities of BPA [leaching out],” Warner observed back around 2009. A nanogram is a billionth of a gram. “The average cash register receipt that's out there and uses the BPA technology will have 60 to 100 milligrams of free BPA,” he reported several years back. That’s a million times more than what ends up in a bottle. (By free, he explained, it’s not bound into a polymer, like the BPA in a bottle. The individual molecules are loose and ready for uptake.)


Is BPA on Thermal Paper A Health Risk? - includes tips on reducing exposure. Yikes... "Quickly wash your hands after touching a receipt. Scrub with soap and water. If you wait longer than four minutes, it’s too late."
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While putting away dishes yesterday, I noticed some odd irregular shaped small spots on one of the Rubbermaid plastic containers (the bottom clear plastic part, not the lid). At first I thought it was food stuck to it, but washing it again, and scratching at the spots with my fingernails made no difference. It seems to be spots etched out of the plastic.

I asked my sister what food she had in the container last; baked apples with oranges, cinnamon and vanilla (hmmm, sounds tasty). So at first I thought that maybe the acid from the apples or oranges had etched the plastic, which was surprising as I'd never known plastic to be eaten away by acidic foods.

But the below thread indicates the spots are most likely from microwaving food in the container, and having the food get so hot that it melts the plastic in those spots. That makes sense, as I never microwave food in plastic containers, but my sister and niece do.

What is this white stuff on my plastic storage container?

The spots on my container look similar to the photo at the top of that page, except mine are on the sides of the container instead of the bottom, and more spread out rather than one big splot. More like the first photo link on this comment. (But neither me nor my sister has been using the dishwasher, so it has to be from microwaving.)

aluminum can linings

Monday, May 28th, 2018 10:11 pm
darkoshi: (Default)
I didn't know that aluminum cans have polymer linings on the inside, as otherwise the aluminum would dissolve into the soda.

The Secret Life of the Aluminum Can, a Feat of Engineering
The resin is usually epoxy, but it may also be vinyl, acrylic, polyester, or oleoresin, and could even be styrene, polyethylene, or polypropylene. The mixture also requires either a solvent, so that the epoxy can cure when baked, or a photo-initiator, so that the epoxy can cure when exposed briefly to ultraviolet (UV) light. The cross-linking agent of choice for the most tenacious epoxy coating is bisphenol-A, or BPA. According to coatings specialists, roughly 80 percent of that epoxy is BPA.
...
Because of BPA, everybody dances around what to call the can’s internal corrosion inhibitor. The FDA calls it a resinous and polymeric coating. At Can School, Ball employees called it an organic coating, or water-based polymer. The EPA calls it a chemical pollutant. Health researchers call it an endocrine disruptor, and a chronic toxin.
darkoshi: (Default)
Why can we smell metal? - it's not actually the metal that smells.

I was wondering last week why my hand smelled bad, then realized it was from simply having touched the metal zipper pull on an old duffle bag. (Yet when I later sniffed the zipper, it didn't smell). Certain metals like that (not sure what kind, but generally the yellowish/bronze colored ones) make my hands smell so horrible that I have to wash them to get rid of the smell. Then I wondered if other people could smell metal too, which led to me finding the above information.
darkoshi: (Default)
Interesting article: What's the Difference Between Dutch Process and Natural Cocoa Powder?
Natural cocoa is acidic, and the acidity of your ingredients affects the leavening you should use.

Even more enlightening: Baking Basics: Baking Powder vs Baking Soda
darkoshi: (Default)
Propanediol versus Propylene Glycol - explains the difference.

Some years ago when several deodorants started listing propanediol in their ingredient list, I looked up what it was. Based on the info I found, I thought it was just another name for propylene glycol.

Seeing as some personal care products stated on the label that they were propylene-glycol-free, yet they had propanediol in the ingredient list, that seemed deceptive to me. Or as some kind of marketing ploy - apparently some people are allergic or sensitive to propylene glycol, or dislike it for other reasons. I've never noticed any problems with it, personally.

But the document at the above link explains that both compounds really are very different, even though they have the same formula, C3H8O2.

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