BioDenta Total Care Toothpaste – 75ml Have you ever stopped to think about the toothpaste you use twice a day? Toothpaste is one of those products most of us buy almost automatically. We walk down the supermarket aisle, recognise a familiar name, perhaps look for words such as “total”, “complete” or “protection” on the box, and put it in the trolley. And that's understandable. After all, what most of us want from a toothpaste isn't particularly complicated. We want it to clean our teeth properly. Help remove plaque. Protect against tooth decay. Look after our enamel. Leave our mouth feeling fresh. And we want it to do those things every morning and every evening. But BioDenta started from a slightly different question. Could an everyday toothpaste do everything you expect it to do, while being made predominantly from naturally derived ingredients? That's the thinking behind BioDenta Total Care. 97% natural ingredients. 100% serious about dental care. Total Care is made with 97% natural ingredients. But we don't think the interesting part is the percentage on its own. Because creating a “natural” toothpaste is easy if you're prepared to compromise on what people actually expect a toothpaste to do. BioDenta hasn't taken that route. Total Care combines its predominantly natural formulation with 1,450ppm fluoride, alongside ingredients including hydroxyapatite, and is designed to provide the everyday cleaning, plaque and enamel protection you'd expect from a serious toothpaste. In other words, this isn't a niche natural product you have to make allowances for. It's intended to replace the toothpaste already sitting beside your bathroom sink. Natural where it makes sense. Conventional where the evidence makes sense. That's an important distinction. BioDenta could have made Total Care fluoride-free and pushed the “natural” percentage even higher. It hasn't. Fluoride remains one of the most established ingredients in preventative dental care, and current UK guidance recommends toothpastes containing 1,350–1,500ppm fluoride for adults. BioDenta Total Care contains 1,450ppm. So rather than treating “natural” and “scientific” as opposites, BioDenta has brought the two together. Natural where it makes sense. Conventional where the evidence makes sense. It's an approach we find considerably more convincing than simply putting the word “natural” on a toothpaste box. There's more going on inside the tube Look down the ingredient list and Total Care becomes more interesting still. Alongside fluoride you'll find hydroxyapatite – a calcium phosphate mineral closely related to the mineral naturally found in tooth enamel and dentine. Hydroxyapatite has attracted considerable scientific interest in oral care, particularly for its potential role in remineralisation and protecting the tooth surface. There's also potassium nitrate, an ingredient widely used in oral-care formulations, together with zinc, hydrated silica and other ingredients performing different jobs within the toothpaste. You'll even find charcoal and PAP (phthalimidoperoxycaproic acid) in the formulation. But we don't want to turn Total Care into a whitening toothpaste simply because those ingredients are there. BioDenta has separate products for people specifically looking for whitening. The point here is different. Total Care is an unusually considered formulation for something designed simply to be a very good everyday toothpaste. We'll look at some of these ingredients – and the research behind them – in much greater detail under the Science Behind It and Ingredients tabs. What does “SLS-free” actually mean? BioDenta also describes Total Care as SLS-free. It's worth explaining that rather than simply putting the claim in a bullet point. SLS stands for sodium lauryl sulphate, a surfactant commonly used in toothpaste to help it spread, cleanse and foam. BioDenta Total Care doesn't contain traditional sodium lauryl sulphate. It does contain Sodium C12-18 Alkyl Sulfate, a related surfactant which performs an important cleansing role. BioDenta describes this as a milder alternative to traditional SLS, derived from a blend of fatty acids. So “SLS-free” doesn't mean BioDenta has simply removed the cleansing agent that helps toothpaste do its job. It means it has chosen a different surfactant. And what about PEGs and parabens? Total Care is also formulated without PEGs or parabens. PEGs – polyethylene glycols – can perform a number of functions in personal-care formulations, while parabens are widely used as preservatives. Their presence in another toothpaste doesn't automatically make that toothpaste bad or unsafe. And we don't think BioDenta needs that sort of argument to make its case. What's interesting is that its formulators have chosen to create Total Care without them while still producing a practical toothpaste intended for twice-daily use. That's a much more meaningful reason to talk about what's been left out. This is the BioDenta for every day If you've got particularly sensitive teeth, BioDenta makes Sensitive. If whitening is your priority, there are specialist Superwhite and Charcoal Whitening formulations. But if you're simply looking at the toothpaste you normally buy and thinking: “Could I make a better choice without giving anything up?” Total Care is where we'd start. It's fresh mint flavoured, vegan and halal friendly, and combines 97% natural ingredients with 1,450ppm fluoride and a carefully considered oral-care formulation. No exaggerated promises. No suggestion that everything natural is automatically good or everything conventional is automatically bad. Just a different approach to something you use twice every day. 97% natural ingredients. 100% serious about dental care. 4 x 75ml tube. Prefer to try it first? Order a single tube here.