Why Does Toothpaste Make Orange Juice Taste Bad?

Why does toothpaste make orange juice taste bad? Chuck recounts his first-hand experience, and how it works.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from how Stuff Works dot Com? Hi, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, is staff writer here how
Stuff Works dot Com. And with me is my fellow

(00:23):
staff writer, the extraordinary Charles Bryant. Are you doing shut him?
Are you? Yeah? I'm just waking up so fantastic. Well,
you know, when you woke up this morning, you brush
your teeth. I did, and you know what, just to
prep myself for this, I drank some orange juice immediately
after I brush my teeth. Well, I think we all
know is one of the worst things you can do
to yourself. And you did this on purpose, just to

(00:45):
prep I did. I'm a method podcaster, Josh, and I
thought it was the role required it. I salute the
dedication to your cremer ship. Actually, that's funny that that
you should do that. Well, it's not that funny if
you're preparing for it, because that means you read this article.
Why does orange juice taste bad if you brush your teeth?
So since you read it, I guess we can have
a pretty pretty intelligent conversation about it. Right, Well, we'll try.

(01:06):
Let's see what you got on flavor. Uh, flavor, I've
got a little bit on flavor. Uh. Flavor is divided
into five different categories, which most four of what you've
probably heard of. Uh, you got sweet, you have salty,
you have better, you have sour, and then you have
mommy mommy meaty tastes. Yeah, meaty tastes. I don't know
why they didn't just call it meaty. Actually, I don't

(01:28):
know either. I think O mommy is just as nice
because everyone wants to know what the heck O ou
mommy is. Anyways, you get to say them both. If
you just said meaty, no, they'd say what's meeting and
you'd say you mommy icebreaker? Yeah, exactly, a Japanese icebreaker. Yeah.
Uh so anyway, sorry you got sidetracked. Um, flavor is
all these different five things, and they react with each

(01:50):
other to create different different flavors with flavor combinations, and
you get flavor and temperature and consistency and smell and
texture together and you have, uh what we know about taste. Well,
it's kind of like all of the different toppings available
from Delicious Pizza. Hut brand Pizza working together to create

(02:10):
over one million combinations of delicious pizza. That's astounding. It
is astounding and delicious actually, so we we kind of
understand flavor a little bit. What we understand less though,
is exactly how this works. Um. When I was researching
taste for this article, I ran across an article written
by one of our esteem colleagues, Sarah Dowdy, and she

(02:33):
wrote on how smell works. And of course these two
are are you know, they're work in conjunction, and actually
we don't really know how either one works, but they're
they're prevailing theories that explain both, and they're pretty similar.
Actually has to do with our taste receptors, and they're
supposedly shaped a certain way and they accept only certain
shaped molecules, So like your sweet receptor is shaped so

(02:55):
that it would only accept molecules that possess this maybe
a sweet uh property to them? Right? What's the shape like?
It's it's shaped like an egg. You don't want to
know what do mommy shape like? It's terrible down there. Um,
But that's that's pretty much what we're thinking. How how
taste works? Um, And we have a little better handle

(03:16):
on exactly what's going on with that horrible collision of
orange juice and toothpaste. Do you you know what it was?
I mean you read the article, right, Yeah I did. Um.
One leading theory is that it's it's this chemical compound.
Is it a chemical compound? I believe it is. I
mean it's got three names, right, Sodium laurel sulfate, which
is a surfactant, which is a fancy name for kind

(03:36):
of a sudd saying agent. So you know, you brush
your teeth and it gets you foam at the mouth
like a you know, rabbit dog. Rabbit dog. Everyone likes
this rabbit dog. It's never a rabbit cat. Yeah. You
don't want to run across the Atticus finch when you
have a mouthful of s l last you don't. So anyway,
the the the SLS doesn't really do anything except make
you think that your teeth are getting cleaner and it

(03:57):
helps sell toothpaste. Yeah, well it's doing a heck of
a job. Uh. And from our understanding of s l last,
I mean, we we have a pretty good idea of
what's going on on the tongue. Um, it's actually like
Conan the Destroyer as far as phosphel lipids are concerned,
These things are basically like little little coverings on your
bitter receptors, kind of tones down bitter taste um, and

(04:19):
it actually goes in and just destroys these things. But
at the same time, it also dampens your sweet receptors.
So when you have Saudio laurel sulfate on the tongue,
your sweetness is down, your bitterness is up, and orange
juice is among the worst things on the planet at
that moment. It's like a perfect storm colliding in your
mouth exactly and your left you know, with your knees

(04:39):
pulled up to your chest, rocking in the corner, just
waiting for this to subside. And how long does that take? Well,
josh Lyn did a study, and I'm not sure why,
but some doctor felt the need to do a study
and he determined that it takes about an hour. It's fantastic.
Case closed. Actually, hopefully the doctor had plenty of volunteers
to try this out and your to do it himself. Well,

(05:01):
if you want to know more about taste and what
we think is going on down there, especially in regards
to orange juice and toothpaste, read why does orange juice
taste bad after you brush your teeth. On how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Because it how stuff works dot Com m

(05:23):
brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready, Are you