In both ancient Greek and Roman texts, there are records of the use of items such as toothpicks and sponges to clean teeth. In China's "Zhou Li", there is also a record of "the first sound of the chicken, salty gargling". Before toothpaste came out, people brushed their teeth with tooth powder. Tooth powder is a mixture of calcium carbonate and soap powder whose function is simply to keep teeth clean and remove stains. Later toothpaste is also mainly made of chalky soil, animal bone meal, herbs, salt single or compounded tooth powder or toothpaste. The sale of toothpaste as a commodity in metal hoses began in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. At that time, the combination of chalk soap was used as the basis for the toothpaste formulation. After the Second World War, a new toothpaste consisting of calcium bisphosphate, sodium lauryl sulfate and carboxymethyl cellulose appeared. Modern toothpaste is a paste-like mixture of a variety of materials. The main ingredients are friction agents, moisturizers, foaming agents, perfumers, as well as sweeteners, preservatives and water. Medicated toothpaste also contains a variety of agents for the prevention and treatment of dental disease.
The perfume of toothpaste is generally called a fragrance. By adding several spices, it can be used in flavors such as mint, spearmint, fruit and holly.
Spearmint and mint are the most common types of toothpaste, if you pay a little attention, you will find that the coolness and aroma of spearmint toothpaste are basically no different from peppermint toothpaste, in fact, spearmint and mint are the same as peppermint is a kind of mint genus of the peristome, spearmint, also known as green mint, native to the Mediterranean region.
Stem and leaf distinction
Spearmint leaves
Spearmint: rhizome cluster, upright stem, dark green or purple, about 0.5 to 1 meter tall, blunt four-sided, grooved and striped, multi-branched, hairless. The leaves are opposite, the leaf surface is wrinkled, the leaf dorsal has glandular spots, and the leaf margin has sharp serrations. The leaves are sessile or nearly sessile, ovate oblong or oblong lanceolate, green above and grayish green below. The color of the leaves is darker, and the veins are more obvious and thick.
Mint leaves
Peppermint: the stem is erect, 30-60 cm high, the lower part has a slender whisker root and a horizontal creeping rhizome, sharp four-sided, with four grooves, the upper part is inverted towards the micro-soft hairs, and the lower part is only slightly soft hairs along the top of the barn, multi-branched. The leaves are dichotomous, oblong and lanceolate, with coarsely serrated edges and slightly soft hairs and glandular spots on the surface. The color is relatively light, the leaf veins are relatively light, the shape is more pointed, and the shape is relatively thin.
Flower and fruit difference
Spearmint plant
Spearmint: Dense apex of the inflorescence forms spikes, flowers are small, white or lilac, intermittent but upwardly dense cylindrical spike-like inflorescences, purple or white, flowering from July to August. Each flower has 4 small nuts.
Peppermint plants
Peppermint: Axillary inflorescences, small and numerous flowers, corolla lip-shaped, purple, reddish or white flowers, flowering period from July to September, fruit period in October. The flowers are dark purple-brown with small glandular fossa and slightly hairy hairs below the throat. The small nuts are ovate.
The ingredients are different
Spearmint: Spearmint can be distilled to extract spearmint oil when the aerial part of the plant is semi-dry, and the composition of spearmint oil is mainly carvacrolone (Tibetan anisoleone), with a content of 50% to 65%,followed by limonene, with a content of 9% to 15%. Spearmint oil has a sweet and soft aroma, slightly cooler and slightly sweeter than mint, mainly as a perfumer for toothpaste, as well as an ingredient for chewing gum, and can also be used as a candy flavoring agent and a medicinal flavoring agent.
Peppermint: Peppermint fresh stems and leaves contain 0.8 to 1.0% peppermint oil, dried stems and leaves contain 1.3 to 2.0%, also known as peppermint crude oil, can be extracted by distillation. The main components of the oil are L-menthol accounting for about 77 to 87%, and others still have 10 to 20% L-mentholone and 1 to 6% menthol acetate. Peppermint oil is fractionated and frozen, crystallized, can be extracted menthol, the remaining oil is called menthol oil, which still contains about 55% of menthol. Peppermint oil and brain have a strong, fresh, sharp mint fragrance, which can be used to prepare summer medicines such as cool oil and mint lozenges, and are also spices for food and cosmetics.
Efficacy is different
Liulan flavor spicy, sweet, slightly warm, return to the liver, spleen, stomach meridian, dispel wind and cold, cough, swelling and detoxification, used for colds, coughs, stomach pain, bloating, neuropathic headaches and other symptoms, externally used for bruises, swelling pain, red eye pain, children's boils and so on.
Peppermint flavor spicy, cool, stem, leaf into the medicine has the effect of dispelling wind and heat dissipation, pain relief, stomach and expectorant, mainly for the treatment of colds, headaches, coughs, sore throat and other symptoms.
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