Homemade toothpaste!

After getting some helpful suggestions on my blog, I decided to make my post this week a DYI post and engage some of my readers on easy recipes for homemade items. This weeks culprit: toothpaste. I've known for some time that the ingredients in commercial toothpastes (Crest, Colgate, etc.) were harmful. Many harmful additives and chemicals are added into toothpaste that can easily and effectively be replaced by simple raw materials.

I took a picture of the ingredients of the toothpaste I am currently using: Colgate Optic White.

I know i'ts not the best picture, but some of the ingredients include flavor, sodium lauryl sulfate, BHT, and disodium pyroposphate. If you Google any of those chemicals (plus basically any of the other ones I didn't even name), you will find dozens websites, blogs, news articles filled with health warnings, environmental groups rallying against the chemical, uses, and alternatives. Each of these chemicals is linked to cancer. 

So anyway, I've been meaning to make my own toothpaste for a while now as a part of my chemical-free journey. What gave me the idea for this post, though, was when recently I was scrolling through Facebook and I saw a post from a girl I went to high school. She is a dental hygienist now; just graduated from UofM in Spring 2014. Her post talked about how she's seem multiple patients with actual damage in their teeth from using Crest 3D White. Something about how there's tiny shards of plastic to help "erode" stains but it was actually eroding enamel. So...that's why I decided to make my own toothpaste for this post, because I am basically using the equivalent of Crest 3D White in Colgate form. 

I was searching the blogs I follow (now on my new blogroll!) and I found this article on chemical-free-living.com with a few different toothpaste recipes, but I saw another recipe that used coconut oil which I already have (and love) so I looked for one that used a good amount of coconut oil. So anyway I roughly used this recipe, but if you want to try this you should research a few different recipes and see which one you like best!

This is my variation of the recipe in pictures!

The ingredients:

-Raw, organic, unrefined coconut oil. (12 tbsp)

-Baking soda (12 tbsp)

-Raw, organic stevia (to taste; ~1-5 tbsp)

-Any essential oils (to taste; start with 15-20 drops and go up from there) I used wintergreen, but other good ideas include peppermint, grapefruit, or lemon. 

Mix all ingredients and brush yo teef!

I warmed up the coconut oil in the microwave (with the metal top off) so it would be easier to mix in the ingredients. 

I added the baking soda and mixed in it...

Then I added the stevia...

...and the wintergreen essential oil and mixed them in.

And voila! This was the finished product. It was still liquid-y obviously because the coconut oil it still warm. Once it cools down a bit, it will solidify and I will literally just dip my toothbrush in the jar to use it. 

Baking soda is a whitening agent so I won't have to sacrifice that part or the minty part. I'll update my readers in my next post about how I like it. I tasted a small amount, and it tastes exactly like the ingredients...so it might take some time getting used to but I think I can handle it and it will be best in the long run. :)

How vegetarianism reduces your carbon footprint

As I mentioned in my last blog post, another way to reduce the amount of chemicals in your everyday life is to cut meat out of your diet. I think almost everyone these days is aware that packaged meat contains some type of chemicals and antibiotics. By not eating meat, you are not only helping to weed out chemicals in your life, but you are also reducing your negative effect on the environment, aka your "carbon footprint." You can do even more for the environment by adapting a vegan diet-- something that I foresee in my future but I am not quite there yet.

According to this article from the Huffington Post Green, a study that was done to compare the greenhouse gas emissions between people with various diets such as carnivores, vegetarians, and vegans. The study heeded results that show that the green house gas emissions from meat-eaters are almost twice than those of a vegan. Not that the person themselves emits more greenhouse gas, but they help to contribute to the problem.  The transportation of livestock, the production of the meat, the burning of fossil fuels at farms, and all the water used in farming livestock contribute to global climate change.

A fact from Body + Soul Magazine cited in this blog from reducefootprints.blogspot.com states that If 10,000 people replaced a beef meal with a vegetarian meal only once a week per year, the planet would save enough water to fill 605 Olympic-sized pools. Wut. I really have no idea how much water that is, but it sounds like a lot, so that makes it crazy. If you are interested, you can read through both of those blog posts for other facts and interesting information about how cutting meat out from your diet reduces your carbon footprint.

You don't have to become a vegetarian overnight-- or even at all. You could just replace one meal per week with a vegetarian meal and you'd help reduce your carbon footprint tremendously. And, it gets easier over time. I love cooking and I love food and I still basically eat whatever I want. Even (fake) chicken nuggets which taste exactly like actual chicken nuggets. More and more restaurants offer vegetarian and vegan options, and if you like to cook like me, you can experiment and make your own dishes. One of my go-to dishes is just a vegetable stir fry that is filling and delicious.Last night I made grilled veggie burritos with rice, beans, cheese, and salsa. I'm just trying to point out that it's really not as hard as it sounds and you can still eat really good food! I never feel like I'm missing out.

I challenge my readers to just try replacing one meal a week for a few weeks with a meatless meal. Comment and let me know about your experiences! I would also be happy to answer any questions you may have! Good luck :)