How Toothpaste Became a Mainstream Product

https://capitalandgrowth.org/articles/859/book-summary-the-power-of-habit.html

by jkuria • 8 years ago

105 37 8 years ago

capitalandgrowth.org

rapfaria• 8 years ago

TL;DR: Cliff Notes of "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg, with a clickbaity title.

yesenadam• 8 years ago

Ah thanks, yes it is, and extremely badly written. I couldn't stand the style for long.

goldenkey• 8 years ago

Too many copied and pasted sentences accidently repeated. Blatant hack job.

Untit1ed• 8 years ago

Interesting content, but it really needs a proof-read. There's entire repeated sentences that have evidently been copy-pasted during a rewrite and never deleted from their original location :/.

jkuria• 8 years ago

Thanks for the feedback. We've now hired an editor and the next book summaries should be higher quality.

Overtonwindow• 8 years ago

There's a better discussion of this with the author on Fresh Aire.

dredmorbius• 8 years ago

From 2012?

https://www.npr.org/2012/03/05/147192599/habits-how-they-for...

throwaway5752• 8 years ago

"The last claim was outright untrue as the 'film' he alluded to in the advertisement is a naturally occurring membrane which cannot be removed by toothpaste"

Is that true? I think the outermost layer of a tooth is just enamel. Open to being wrong (not a dentist) but I think it somewhat detracts from credibility (even though toothpaste is not actually the thrust of the article).

moftz• 8 years ago

There is plaque build up which the "fuzzy" feeling that you might have after waking up in the morning or just after not brushing for awhile. It's a biofilm but it's easily removed by brushing.

tritium4• 8 years ago

The social mechanisms and agents operating business channels to broadly affect change in behavioral norms through obtuse, distributed influence and produce widely held beliefs with financial results for large companies and economic outcomes across an entire industry, doesn't interest me as much as other aspects surrounding the story of twentieth century medical and cosmetic products.

Namely, what toothpaste is, how it works, and the prevailing clues offered as bellwethers for its effectiveness as a preventative treatment.

This is the story of how to make something happen, whether it's useful and valuable to the individual or not. I'd rather see that story prefaced or intermingled with the details of a product's true utility, before hearing about the complicated and concerted effort to bring such a product to market (warts and all). I don't feel that such details are beyond the scope of a story of commercial success. Far from it. The mechanics of genuine utility are of paramount relevance, at least eye-to-eye with the behind-the-scenes schmoozings of success.

Missing from the story are the odd details that reveal flouride's role in dental health, and its hazards and side effects as a medication. Also missing, is the detail regarding the industrial scale source of flouride's precursors, glossed over, even with the mention of at least one aluminum company, and hints implying a nod to the war effort, prior to the start of the second world war.

It's also short on specific dates, skipping across broad periods, mentioning mostly decades as eras of activity or progress.

Flouride and dentistry are weird topics with a lot of trivia, but this article only explains the activities of businessmen operating from advantageous positions, which for the most part, given the hindsight of the article lend an almost obvious and deterministic view of the outcome of their success. It reads like the musings of an amateur hunter relishing the idea of a canned hunt.

Without including the low-level hard science of why toothpaste is effective, this story casts toothpaste in a role as seemingly empty as perhaps the Juicero juicer [0], or any number of other hollow products sold via infommercial or trumpeted alongside buzz words like Internet of Things.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juicero

Judgmentality• 8 years ago

Reading that made me wish you'd written an article on the efficacy of toothpaste. So what do you think about its utility, and what are your thoughts on fluoride?

tritium4• 8 years ago

The clues about flouride’s long-term action, and role as medication are usually avoided, because the medical curiosities that demonstrated flouride’s interaction with bone and tooth chemistry, and pointed the way to it’s discovery are possibly unsettling, and hinder the sales pitch of flouride in general.

And of course there’s the politicized paranoia of contaminating the public water supply, and who should get to decide such things, and why they might choose to do it.

But, those stories usually focus on intrigue, and don’t explain much about the chemistry of the element flourine, ionic compounds, or much of anything else, and dissolve into hand-wavey boogie men.

You basically get two incomplete pictures of the same story. What both sides leave out is that flouride has medical utility, but while toxicity is a potential risk, it’s not some mysterious subversive threat, and the benefits weigh favorably against the side effects.

Also, no one ever tells you that a little bit won’t hurt. Opponents offer hysterics of zero tolerance for poisonous toxic waste and brain damage. See also, Dr. Strangelove, and the idea of precious bodily fluids.

Meanwhile, advocates never tell you that you might be okay with flouride toothpaste just once a week, and no flouride at all the rest of the week, brushing with just pure, ordinary water (Mandrake). Instead, advocates advise twice a day, ...no more, but certainly no less.

And proponents of public flouridated water usually sidestep the premise of prescriptive public health as offering a leg up to people who might not have disposable income for toothpaste. Charity chafes all sides. Some might be too proud to accept the premise of assistance. Others bristling at the undertones of that idea amounting to other people’s needs conflicting with the autonomy of those with the capacity for choice between such options.

thatcat• 8 years ago

the low level hard science

The science is pretty basic. CaCO3 powder made into a paste form provides a source of calcium and alkalinity - protecting the teeth from acid created by bacteria. The rest is marketing. The effective way to deliver flouride is a higher concentration that only touches your teeth, which is how it is used at the dentist after a cleaning.

If toothpaste's success was based on utility there would be brands offering probiotic paste that colonizes your mouth and uses glucose with out making biofilms or having acid as an end product of metabolism. Then you wouldn't even really need to constantly brush your teeth or buy more toothpaste. The maximum utility product would cost a lot to develop and ruin the business model.

tritium4• 8 years ago

That science isn’t basic, considering the period in which the product was introduced. The manner of action is pretty subtle, and an impatient person seeking immediate results would not be inclined to believe in mechanisms that lack readily observable results.

This is why toothpaste’s marketing relies heavily on peer pressure and establishing trust in habitual use. Habitual use also carries the obviously juicy benefit of boosting volume and revenue.

B1FF_PSUVM• 8 years ago

change in behavioral norms

You should have seen the "shall I tell him he has body odour?" ads that the soap manufacturers ran a few decades ago.

Big score, there's deodorant as a life necessity installed in the common mind.

Not a complaint, I just think that soap makers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

mgv11• 8 years ago

Just finished this book last week actually. Though it was interesting and helpful to identify what habits are really are and how to change.

gumby2• 8 years ago

There are some unconvincing examples here!

The most famous and widespread case of a successful habit change is perhaps the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program

It's a reach to call it a "successful habit change" given that actual study show a success rate of less than 3%.

We also know that we all have a limited supply of willpower.

Actually it looks like that isn't the case after all.

Etc.

erikb• 8 years ago

> We also know that we all have a limited supply of willpower.
Actually it looks like that isn't the case after all.

Huh? You mean you've read an article, or there are several independent studies showing what you say?

I really doubt that this would be untrue because I can apply it to my life and it makes things better.

bsder• 8 years ago

Huh? You mean you've read an article, or there are several independent studies showing what you say?

He is pointing to the fact that the studies that originated the "willpower pool" hypothesis have been increasingly discredited.

gumby2• 8 years ago

There have been several studies that have failed to support that now 20-year-old hypothesis: https://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/06/24/new-research-challenges... https://hbr.org/2016/11/have-we-been-thinking-about-willpowe...

jclos• 8 years ago

Look at the criticism section of the Wikipedia page of ego depletion (the term for finite quantity of willpower): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion#Reproducibility_...

Like most things the true is probably somewhere in between and the effect is probably there, just not as strong as the original publication implied. Sprinkle a bit of placebo effect on top of that and that could lead to people (e.g. you) using the concept of ego depletion with a lot of success.

golergka• 8 years ago

I think the main reason for success (as in popularity) of Alcoholic Anonymous is how awesome it is from screenwriting perspective.

violetchahcki• 8 years ago

Right now there are no effective hygiene products for nasal area. Something like a harmless mist that instantly drains all the mucus from the sinuses (along with all the bacterial/viral load that cause health problems and bad breath) would be real nice. Again, some sort of mouthwash that instantly dissolves tonsil stones would be even better :) But such items are currently absent from the roster of hygienic products. Safe products like these would make someone an overnight billionaire or make stocks of Johnson & Johnson / Colgate - Palmolive jump higher:)

vanderZwan2• 8 years ago

Something like a harmless mist that instantly drains all the mucus from the sinuses (along with all the bacterial/viral load that cause health problems and bad breath) would be real nice.

This might sounds too low-tech (and can't be patented), but simple nasal irrigation with a lukewarm isotonic saline solution works pretty well for me in this department.

naravara2• 8 years ago

This might sounds too low-tech (and can't be patented), but simple nasal irrigation with a lukewarm isotonic saline solution works pretty well for me in this department

In terms of building habits and routines, I think the trouble with nasal irrigation is that it takes too much work to prep the water. I do it during allergy season, but only because my hay fever is bad enough that the relief is a big help. If you want people to make a habit out of it in the absence of having their sinuses assaulted by trees, it would be good if there was a way to have water for your neti pot as easily available as toothpaste is.

You'd need a gizmo that can quickly and easily take an adequate quantity of water, sanitize it, bring it to temperature, and add the appropriate quantity of salt to make it isotonic without too much effort on the part of the user.

audiolion• 8 years ago

I deal with tonsilloths a lot and my solution is gargling hydrogen peroxide mixed with water, it isnt perfect though

zzz95• 8 years ago

3 options to drain your sinuses.

1) Eat a chili pepper. As hot as you can handle. The point is to get you perspiring and salivating. Will completely drain your sinuses in the next 5 mins.

2) Aerobic exercise or a run for 10 mins.

3) Inhaling steam.

tobyhinloopen• 8 years ago

thank you for reminding me I need to buy toothpaste

How Toothpaste Became a Mainstream Product

Related Stories