Stuff You Should Know - Why Does Toothpaste Make Orange Juice Taste Bad?

Episode Date: May 13, 2008

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.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here at HowStuffWorks.com. And with me is my fellow staff writer, the extraordinary Charles Bryant. How are you doing, Chuck? How are you doing, Chuck? How are you? You okay over there? Yeah, I'm just waking up.

Sorry. Fantastic. Well, you know, when you woke up this morning, did you brush your teeth? I did. And you know what? Just to prep myself for this, I drank some orange juice, immediately after I brushed my teeth, which I think we all know is one of the worst things you can do to yourself. And you did this on purpose just to prep? I did. I'm a method podcaster, Josh, and I thought it was the role required it. I salute the dedication to your craft, Chuck. I appreciate that. Actually, that's funny 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 after you brush your teeth? So, since you read it, I guess we

can have a pretty intelligent conversation about it, right? Well, we'll try. Let's see what you got on flavor. Flavor. I've got a little bit on flavor. Flavor is divided into five different categories, which most four of which you've probably heard of. You get sweet, you have salty, you have bitter, you have sour, and then you have umami. Umami, meaty taste. Yeah, meaty taste. I don't know why they didn't just call it meaty, actually. I don't know either. I think umami is just as nice because everyone wants to know what the heck umami is anyway, so you get to say them both. If you just said meaty, no one would say what's meaty and you'd say umami. Right. It's an icebreaker. Yeah, exactly. A Japanese icebreaker. Yeah. So anyway, sorry,

you got sidetracked. Flavor is all these different five things and they react with each other to create different flavors with flavor combinations. And you get flavor and temperature and consistency and smell and texture together, and you have 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 over one million combinations of delicious pizza. Right. That's astounding. It is astounding and delicious, actually. So we kind of understand flavor a little bit. A little bit. Well, we understand less, though, is exactly how this works. Right. When I was researching taste for this article, I ran across an article written by one of our esteemed colleague, Sarah Dowdy.

Right. And she wrote on how smell works. And of course, these two are, you know, they work in conjunction. And actually, we don't really know how either one works, but they're prevailing theories that explain both. And they're pretty similar, actually. It 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 that it would only accept molecules that possess this maybe a sweet property to them, right? Right. What's it shaped like? It's shaped like an egg. Oh, you don't want to know what umami shaped like. Yeah, no, I don't. It's terrible down there. But that's that's pretty much what we're thinking how how taste works.

And we have a little better handle on exactly what's going on with that horrible collision of orange juice and toothpaste. Do you know what it was? I mean, you read the article. Yeah, I did. Um, one leading theory is that 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 of a sudsing 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 always says rabbit dog. It's never a rabbit cat. Yeah, you don't want to run across Atticus Finch when you have a mouthful of SLS. No, you don't. So anyway, the the SLS doesn't really do anything except make

you think that your teeth are getting cleaner and it helps sell toothpaste. Yeah, well, I it's doing a heck of a job. And from our understanding of SLS, I mean, we have a pretty good idea of what's going on on the tongue. Right. It's actually like Conan the destroyer as far as phospholipids are concerned. These things are basically like little little coverings on your bitter receptors kind of tones down bitter taste. And it actually goes in and just destroys these things. Right. But at the same time, it also dampens your sweet receptors. So when you have sodium 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 you're left, you know, with your knees pulled up to your chest rocking in the corner, just waiting for this to subside. And how long does that take? Well, Josh, someone 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 a fantastic case closed actually. Yep. Hopefully the doctor had plenty of volunteers to try this out. Right. Well, 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 howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

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