Help me out here, but toothpast contains sugar???? REALLY!?

[Floweryfields]

I am on holidays and started off day one having a good ole clean out. Cleaning out the draws in the bathroom - seem to get toothpaste over everything, noticing how easily it wipes off - hmm, wonder what the ingredients are in it anyway?

I use 'natural' toothpaste because I am alergic to flouride - and none of the 'normal' toothpastes are flouride free. Anyway it contains glycerin (which is similiar in make up to regular sugar) and saccharin.
The tube of colgate total that was in there also contained these two ingredients.

Now call me really stupid, but doesn't it kind of defy part of the point for brushing your teeth when the stuff you use contains one of the things that give you cavities to begin with?????

[Little Chicken]

Glycerol (or glycerin, glycerine) is a simple polyol compound. It is a colorless, odorless, viscous liquid that is widely used in pharmaceutical formulations. Glycerol has three hydrophilic hydroxyl groups that are responsible for its solubility in water and its hygroscopic nature. The glycerol backbone is central to all lipids known as triglycerides. Glycerol is sweet-tasting and of low toxicity. The term polyglycerol refers to many glycerol molecules together.

In foods and beverages, glycerol serves as a humectant, solvent, and sweetener, and may help preserve foods. It is also used as filler in commercially prepared low-fat foods (e.g., cookies), and as a thickening agent in liqueurs. Glycerol and water are used to preserve certain types of leaves. As a sugar substitute, it has approximately 27 calories per teaspoon and is 60% as sweet as sucrose. Although it has about the same food energy as table sugar, it does not raise blood sugar levels, nor does it feed the bacteria that form plaques and cause dental cavities. As a food additive, glycerol is labeled as E number E422.

[Little Chicken]

Saccharin[2] is an artificial sweetener. The basic substance, benzoic sulfilimine, has effectively no food energy and is much sweeter than sucrose, but has a bitter or metallic aftertaste, especially at high concentrations. It is used to sweeten products such as drinks, candies, biscuits, medicines, and toothpaste.

[Floweryfields]

Thanks, LC, I did already know that - my point was why are they putting sugar in toothpaste? Surely it can't be helping our teeth - I never rinse it all out, so it sits in my mouth on my teeth, how is that different to drinking something with sugar in it and not brushing?

[luna moth]

Because sugar does feed the cavity causing bacteria, but glycerin/saccharin don't. As the above quotes state.