【Big Think】Do you really need to use toothpaste?

Billions of people around the world dutifully brush their teeth with toothpaste every day, but some are starting to question this status quo. These contrarians see sense in brushing but aren’t sure whether the paste is really necessary. And it’s not just laypersons wondering out loud about this apparent blasphemy — critiques are coming from dentists themselves.

These views likely originate from a minority of dentists, but they appear prominently on Google searches. To the layperson, such statements can seem equally authoritative to those of the American Dental Association (ADA). The ADA, by the way, recommends “brushing teeth twice a day for two minutes using a fluoride toothpaste.”

“Conceivably yes,” Grant Ritchey, a dentist in Tonganoxie, Kansas, told Big Think. Ritchey practices with a skeptical, evidence-based mindset and shares that worldview on numerous platforms. “The main variables would be if the fluoride rinse had the same concentration and duration of contact with the teeth as the toothpaste, if the teeth were clean when the mouth rinse was used, etc. If those are kept constant, it would be the same.”

When they were first sold commercially in the latter half of the 19th century, toothpastes generally contained chalk, soap, essential oils from flowers or wintergreen, and sugar. Adding to the antiquated feel, they were marketed in jars, not tubes. They also didn’t work very well.

Today, a preponderance of evidence suggests that modern varieties do. Are toothpastes 100% essential to maintain a cavity-free, pearly-white smile? Perhaps not. But there’s no denying that they help. If you’re concerned about their recently sky-high costs, but don’t want to ditch toothpaste entirely, you can likely get away with using less on your brush. You don’t need to coat the bristles, just a pea-sized amount is plenty.