15% off Vortex! Just in Time for Spring!

Spring is finally here, and we’d love to add some bright colors to your morning routine. From now until Mother’s Day, get 15% off the list price of Vortex--that's a whole dollar off! No coupon code needed, just head over to Amazon and search for “Vortex Toothpaste.” Happy spring!

Food Dye Dilemma

St. Patrick’s Day was last weekend, and seeing all those green cupcakes and cookies everywhere made me think about food dye. I’ve heard vague rumblings about food dye being unhealthy, and there are even grocery store chains that won’t sell food with artificial dyes. But are they actually bad for you?

Obviously, everyone here at Wright Industries is very interested in the food dye question, as Vortex Toothpaste contains artificial coloring. It’s a tricky question, because on the one hand, artificial coloring is, well, artificial. On the other hand, artificial coloring have been around for over eighty years—Americans eat over 100 million pounds of the dye Brilliant Blue every year without incident.The natural dye carmine, however, can cause a severe allergic reaction in some individuals.  So just because a dye is natural, doesn’t mean it’s better for you. It’s all a bit tricky. 

While poking around the Internet, I found one study in particular that seems to be the most widely cited: “Food additives and hyperactive behaviour in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the community: a randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial.”   In this British survey from 2007, children were given two kinds of drinks with a different mix of artificial dyes and preservatives.  The survey concluded that “[a]rtificial colours or a sodium benzoate preservative (or both) in the diet result in increased hyperactivity in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the general population.” 

The FDA has taken quite a critical look at this study, however, saying:

"...one particular procedural weakness relevant to regulatory application was the use of chemical mixtures as challenge materials which basically precludes identifying which specific compound(s) within the mixtures might be responsible for any treatment related effects. Consequently, there would be little, if any, utility of these findings to assess risk or to support regulatory decisions for specific compounds.”

In other words, when you don’t test chemicals individually, you get really muddy results. Who knows if it’s the just the preservatives that’s making the children hyperactive, or just the red dye, etc?

The FDA more explicitly sums up its reaction to the survey on the FAQs on its website:

Both the FDA and the European Food Safety Authority independently reviewed the results from this study and each has concluded that the study does not substantiate a link between the color additives that were tested and behavioral effects. 

So I suppose that’s the last word from the FDA about that.

I guess what you really have to do is look at each dye individually—each dye is chemically unique, and one chemical may have a different effect on a person than a different one will. This is the main problem that tripped up the 2007 British study—the whole study was basically deemed invalid since they didn’t test the food dyes separately. 

I’m going to take a closer look at specific food dyes over the next few weeks, starting with Brilliant Blue. Check back next week to see what I’ve dug up!

Vortex Now Available in Select Dierbergs Stores!

We know how expensive the shipping costs are when ordering Vortex online, and everyone here at Wright Toothpaste have been trying to make Vortex more cost-effective. The easiest way to do that is to sell our toothpaste in actual brick-and-mortar STORES, but getting a brand-new product on the shelves is a bit tricky. And so we're SO incredibly pleased to announce that...

Vortex Color Changing Toothpaste is now officially on the shelves at four Dierbergs grocery stores in the St. Louis area! Hooray!
These locations are:

Dierbergs Southroads Center

12420 Tesson Ferry Road

St. Louis MO  63128 

Dierbergs Market Place

1730 Clarkson Road

Chesterfield MO  63017

Dierbergs Heritage Place

12595 Olive Blvd

Creve Coeur   MO  63141

Dierbergs Brentwood Pointe

8450 Eager Rd.

St. Louis MO 63144


Please stop by any one of these locations and pick up a tube. It's much cheaper for you all to buy it straight from Dierbergs, instead of having to pay for shipping from us. And if Vortex sells well in those four Dierbergs stores, maybe the Dierbergs folk'll put Vortex in all of their stores! Woo-hoo!

Vortex Protects Cavities Better with Less Chemicals? Awesome!

Happy March, everyone!

I've just put the finished edits on our newest press release, which talks about the pretty astounding results that we had from the FDA testing that Vortex underwent last year. I'm sending it out on the wire service next week, but you can get an early peek at it below:

For Immediate Release:

AMAZING COLOR CHANGING TOOTHPASTE FIGHTS CAVITIES TWO AND A HALF TIMES BETTER THAN CONVENTIONAL TOOTHPASTE—AND WITH LESS CHEMICALS

                          

St. Louis –March 1, 2012 - If changing color isn’t astounding enough, the new Vortex Color Changing Toothpaste has just been proven to protect young teeth two and a half times better than conventional toothpaste, due to Vortex inventor Dr. Howard Wright’s dedication to minimal chemicals.

Fluoride, a naturally occurring chemical, has been proven to help seal teeth against cavities, and only fluoridated toothpaste may receive a seal of approval from the American Dental Association. But conventional toothpastes have a foaming agent, such as sodium lauryl sulfate, which creates foam bubbles that act like a barrier of balloons, preventing the fluoride from reaching the teeth. To compensate for this, toothpaste manufacturers must have a relatively high fluoride content in their toothpaste—around 1200 parts per million in conventional toothpaste.

However, Vortex Toothpaste inventor Dr. Howard Wright is dedicated to having a minimum amount of chemicals in his toothpaste, and has removed the sodium lauryl sulfate from Vortex. Dr. Wright also decided to lower the amount of fluoride in Vortex to 990 parts per million—the minimum amount by law that a toothpaste can contain and still call itself “fluoridated.”

“Fluoride is a natural chemical--it occurs naturally in seawater. Yet everyone here at Wright Toothpaste is dedicated to minimal chemicals in our products,” says Dr. Wright. “It was important to us to have a minimum amount of fluoride in the toothpaste.” 

But in a recent study by Indiana University, scientists found that Vortex Toothpaste imparted two and a half times more fluoride into the tooth than conventional toothpaste. This result surprised even Vortex Toothpaste inventor Dr. Wright—until he realized it was because Vortex had no foaming agent to block the fluoride.

“I knew that foaming agents from toothpastes cause 90% of canker sores in children—it’s too harsh a chemical for children's mouths,” said Dr. Wright. “But I never imagined that taking out some of the chemicals could make the toothpaste work so much better.”

Vortex Color Changing Toothpaste recently became available in forty-one Walgreens stores and four Dierbergs grocery stores in the St. Louis area. Vortex can also be bought online at Amazon.com, drugstore.com, and vortextoothpaste.com. Vortex retails for $6.95, and is proudly manufactured in Muskegon, Michigan.

“The key to invention is not being tied down to old ideas. You’ve got to open your mind to new possibilities,” says Vortex inventor Dr. Wright.  “People say that toothpaste has always had a foaming agent—it’s always been foamy. But the moment I stepped back and asked “why?”—the very moment I did things differently, I got some truly amazing results.”

ABOUT:

With a commitment to local manufacturing and continued innovation, Wright Toothpaste, Inc. is dedicated to solving poor tooth-brushing habits through their unique Vortex Color Changing Toothpaste.  For more information, visit www.vortextoothpaste.com.

CONTACT:

Jessica W. Buha,

Marketing Director, Wright Toothpaste

314-436-3332  vortex@vortextoothpaste.com

###