The Olde Toothpaste Challenge

The other day I was in the grocery store picking up a few items when I realized I was getting low on toothpaste and should pick up a tube. When I reached the section I had to scratch my Head because of the impossibly vast array of toothpaste options there in front of me. Tooth whitening, cavity fighting, bold tasting, fluoride enhanced... I finally went to the Crest section and here were still more choices. Ultimately I bought this spectacularly packaged, Crest Complete Multi-Benefit toothpaste, that not only whitens but gives you a cinnamon rush.

What a beautiful package. Not only is it red, white and blue, it's got some kind of holographic waves flowing across the background/foreground . It also has its main features repeated in Spanish so this dazzling product can be marketed in San Antonio and Los Angeles.

The whole experience of making this purchase brought to mind an Andy Rooney segment from the old Sixty Minutes show. Rooney was a pugnacious, wry wit who made millions distilling a week's worth of thought into a sixty second barb. By way of contrast, there are probably hundreds of local talk radio heads who make a few bucks by stretching sixty seconds of thought into sixty minutes of air.

One of Rooney's pieces was titled The Cost of Ingredients, which begins like this: "I keep looking at things I buy and keep thinking about how they got to cost that much." I can still hear his sarcastic snarl when I read that.

Andy Rooney begins this segment talking about packaging, citing a few examples. He then zeroes in on Crest. He bought two tubes of Crest, at two different places, one for $1.99 and the other for $2.39. Rooney had the ingredients tested at a place called Industrial Testing Laboratories. He wanted to know how much the ingredients for this product cost. To be fair he noted that this same procedure could be carried out with other popular toothpaste brands, so he wasn’t exactly picking on Crest.

He learned that the ingredients cost a total of twelve cents. Experts estimated that the tube and box cost about five cents.

Crest sold 200 million tubes of toothpaste that year, which would mean they spent 24 million on ingredients. With $10 million going to packaging and $41 million on advertising, the company spent half as much on ingredients as on marketing. And the revenue for all that toothpaste, at two dollars a pop, would have been $400 million.

But when I look at the box my Crest came in, I have to say it's really a work of art. It's simply beautiful how they manage to get so much information in such a small amount of space. Here are pictures of cinnamon, with fireworks around them, which means your tongue will be hopping for joy when you taste this paste. If the bright colors and images don't seal the deal, you can read the sales copy on the back. "Feel it working. Know you're covered."

Then the real benefits, in type so small you may need a magnifying glass. Fights Cavities. Removes Surface Stains Freshens Breath.

And the whole thing is repeated again in Spanish, because Hispanics also carry magnifying glasses in their pockets when they go shopping.

In fact, this box of Crest would be a useful tool for teaching Spanish to American children because being bi-lingual is useful in a country that will one day have more Spanish speakers than English.

Finally, let's get to the drug facts. The active ingredient in this tube of Crest is Sodium Flouride, o.243%. It's purpose is even stated clinically. This is an anticavity toothpaste. Other ingredients include sorbitol, water, hydrated silica, disodium pyrophosphate, sodium lauryl sulfate, flavor, sodium saccharin, sodium hydroxide, carbomer, xanthan gum, carnauba wax, cllulose gum, titanium dioxide and red 40. Feel better now? I wanna go brush my teeth again!

But wait. There are also some warnings. "Keep out of reach of children under 6 yrs of age." That's a little scary to me. And here's the really scary part. "If more than used for brushing is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or contact Poison Control Center right away."

Maybe three times a day is safer than every fifteen minutes after all. Have a great weekend. And don't forget to brush.

EdNote: You can find Andy Rooney's The Cost of Ingredients on page 169 of his book Years of Minutes.
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SHS: Should We Be Afraid?

I’m not sure if anyone saw the story a couple years ago linking television watching to what has now been labeled Sawdust Head Syndrome or SHS. There were some who cited a conspiracy of media and either the State or Justice Department to keep the story from going public. CBS was even planning a Sixty Minutes feature on the phenomenon, but under pressure from the Justice Department pulled the piece. Evidently, the TV networks, who helped foster the Alar scare which did huge damage to the apple industry that year, did not want people frightened into not watching television.

Sawdust Head Syndrome was discovered in an increasing number of instances where autopsies were performed and it was discovered that portions of the brain had become sawdust. I can’t recall all the details other than it somehow involved Columbia University. I vaguely recall that research into SHS was also being conducted at the University of MN and Stanford.

At first it was believed the sawdust like material was caused by either a bacteria or virus. When the link to excessive television viewing was finally established, the investigation went under wraps. I guess you can imagine what would happen to our court system if everyone who ever watched TV suddenly sued the TV manufacturers, or Best Buys and Circuit Cities where they bought their gear.

I just did a Google Search and actually found a few stories on the subject. The American Medical Association (AMA) also seems to have been implicated in the cover up. I also found a couple links from a blog to YouTube videos but they came up “file not found” so I’m not sure what’s going on there.

The article about the Justice Department came out in 2006, verifying that Stanford and the U of M were indeed aware of the matter. According to this article they were working in conjunction with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. The piece ends by mentioning that TV sets might be forced to come with warning labels by 2007. I haven’t bought one lately, but if anyone has a new television, I’d be interested in knowing what kind of warnings it carries.

In another article, some of the first reported cases of SHS were from nursing homes where aides would occasionally find flecks of sawdust on patient’s pillows. The sawdust like material usually went unreported until a grad student from Temple University, who himself had been a former aide, made the correlation between the patients having sawdust on the pillows and television viewing.

Personally, I have long suspected that television has been having some kind of impact on our brains. For the purposes of comedy, if this story is proven true, it might also prove that to some extent we’re a nation of blockheads. TV could then be likened to a big saw.

And now, one wonders about the stories circulating that cell phones might cause cancer. Is this true as well, or just another story... or maybe there's another cover up. Should we be afraid?