Article: Why we removed titanium dioxide from Theodent®
Why we removed titanium dioxide from Theodent®
Every Theodent® product is now made without titanium dioxide.
The change came from something we try to do constantly: look critically at the products we make, including ingredients that may have been part of a formula for years, and ask whether each one still deserves to be there.
Titanium dioxide kept coming up in those conversations.
Its purpose in our toothpaste was very specific. Titanium dioxide is a white pigment, and we used it to give the paste the opaque white appearance.
It did not provide an oral-care benefit. It only made the toothpaste look white.
At the same time, we were hearing from a growing number of customers who wanted us to remove it. We pay attention to that kind of feedback, particularly when it lines up with a question we are already asking ourselves about the formula.
So we started working on it.
We first tried to keep the toothpaste looking the same
Our first instinct was not to change the appearance of Theodent®. We began testing other opacifying ingredients that could replace titanium dioxide while preserving the familiar white paste.
We tried a number of formulations.
Some were too dull. Some changed the character of the paste. Most options simply did not produce the same clean, opaque appearance we were trying to preserve.
After enough rounds of samples, we found ourselves standing around the formulation asking a much more obvious question:
What if we just took the titanium dioxide out and did not replace it with anything?
We made the formula without titanium dioxide and without another ingredient added solely to recreate the same white color.
The paste became more translucent.
And once we stopped assuming the paste had to remain white, the solution to our problem ended up being the simplest: remove it, and change nothing else.
The new appearance felt more appropriate
We tested the new appearance internally and externally rather than assuming customers would prefer the traditional opaque white paste.
The response surprised us in a good way. The more translucent appearance was seen as more consistent with what people expected from a toothpaste with clean ingredients.
Instead of trying to make the formula look like our original formula simply because that was familiar, we decided to let it look the way it naturally looked without the added pigment.
That is the version we moved forward with.
What changed, and what did not
The change itself is straightforward: titanium dioxide has been removed from Theodent®, and we did not replace it with another opacifying ingredient simply to make the toothpaste white.
That means a new tube may look more translucent than one you have used in the past. That difference is intentional.
Rennou® remains the active ingredient used by Theodent®. Removing titanium dioxide did not replace Rennou® or change the role it plays in our products.
Our ingredients list is now shorter, and our paste is now a bit clearer.
To Conclude
We do not want ingredients to remain in a product simply because they have always been there or because they help meet a visual convention.
Our customers were asking a reasonable question about titanium dioxide. When we looked closely at its role, we reached the same conclusion: an ingredient whose only purpose was to make the toothpaste look whiter was not something we needed to preserve at all costs.
We spent time trying to replace it because we assumed the toothpaste needed to keep looking the same.
It turned out that it did not.
Today, every Theodent® product is made without titanium dioxide. The toothpaste looks a little different because we chose not to add another ingredient simply to make it look white.
In this case, the simplest formulation turned out to be the one we wanted to keep.
