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Vegetable Oil Absorbant for Toothpaste
We are formulating a toothpaste that includes xylitol, essential oils and baking soda. The xylitol doesn’t absorb the oil so it separates to the top after sitting for a few hours. We added extra baking soda to the formula to absorb the oil, but it’s making the toothpaste taste too salty. Is there another ingredient that would absorb the oil in the toothpaste that anyone can recommend? We tried using some clay, but it made the toothpaste such an ugly color of grey and caused it to stick somewhat to our teeth. We don’t want the toothpaste consistency to be adversely affected by whatever can absorb the extra oil to keep the toothpaste saturated consistently. Thank you for any advice!
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10 Replies
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Silica is commonly used for this purpose, and makes up about 60-70% of the average modern toothpaste formula used in the industrialized world. 3rd world countries use chalk instead, primarily due to cost concerns.
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Silica is hard on the enamel so we were hoping to avoid that. Thank you for replying though. Do you have any other suggestions?
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Take a look at the LOI for Parodontax, which sounds identical to yours. It has been disappearing from the market. Personally I like it.
Ingredients: Sodium Bicarbonate Sodium Fluoride, Water, Glycerol, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Rhatany Tincture, Peppermint Oil, Cornmint Oil, Coneflower, Xanthan Gum, Myrrh Tincture, Chamomile Tincture, Oil of Sage, Sodium Saccharin, Iron Oxide. -
Is there no surfactant in your product?
I find it difficult to imagine an acceptable toothpaste with only the ingredients you have declared.
BTW the “silica” mentioned by Bobzchemist is amorphous silica produced by precipitation or flame hydrolysis. It is not powdered crystalline silica (sand or mineral)
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Thank you Johnb and Belassi. I didn’t list all the ingredients for the toothpaste, just the relevant ones to this discussion. I’ll look up amorphous silica. I didn’t know about this. Thank you very much!
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In the US, 99.8% of all commercially sold toothpaste uses silica in one form or another. The technology to regulate the particle morphology and abrasivity of the silica is very advanced.
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We still have very little information on the components of this mix.
It is thus impossible to give a meaningful reply.
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Saying “silica is hard on the enamel so we won’t use it in our toothpaste” is just like saying “surfactants are hard on skin so we won’t use them in our cleansers”.
There is a reason why silica is so ubiquitous in toothpaste formulas, and it is because it’s possible to engineer amorphous/hydrated silica particles precisely enough that they will be just abrasive enough to remove plaque films efficiently, but not so abrasive as to harm the enamel. Toothpaste has to work in a very short time frame, not just be stable, taste good, and have good mouthfeel. If you ignore the fact that it’s the toothpaste that’s doing the majority of the job in removing plaque films, you’re not going to have many repeat customers.
Going into selling a product and ignoring the way the major players in that market niche formulate their products is very likely to invite failure. Thinking that you just know better than the thousands of formulators/scientists who’ve worked on a product category like toothpaste should be a major red flag that you likely have a fatal flaw in your business plan.
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Since Baking Soda is also an abrasive, do you feel silica is still necessary in a formulation with Baking Soda?
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Amorphous silica (as used in toothpaste) also acts as an efficient suspending agent for other solids in the mixture.
With all due respect, I feel that you need to learn a lot more about the products you are contemplating and their ingredients before you go much further in formulating a product.
Remember that the toothpaste marketplace is dominated by some extremely large multinational companies who employ numerous experienced formulators. Unless you have some revolutionary concept, the chances of entering this market are very slim.
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