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this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2026
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I heard that myself a couple years ago and was equally disappointed/disbelieving. I started looking for more natural plant-based alternatives, but they're actually a plastic polymer too. If you're out hiking and forage for spruce/pine resin directly from the source: it's still plastic. Very surprising, not what I would have intuited.
It's not my field so I don't know if the plant-based stuff is the same level of harm as petroleum-based plastic, but I would imagine either way it's breaking down into undigestible particles that you're stuck with for life.
As far as an alternative goes for minty breath: nothing stops you from cutting out the middleman and chewing on mint leaves directly. They grow like weeds so if you get some in your garden you'll never run out. I guess the freshness probably doesn't last as long that way, but it makes up for itself in intensity which is just as important for a palate cleanser imo. You could probably get more mileage out of it by turning it into iced tea, then you can sip it whenever you need some freshness.
i dont think you want to use a dirty pine needle/resin on your teeth.
You don't know what dirty things I like in my mouth
Mastic I guess would be the next best thing.
I tried it but it's too hard, you cannot really chew it. Even if you make it softer it'll get harder after a while (heh)
There's such a thing as naturally occurring plastic? I'm sure that's not as bad for you though, right?
That's an interesting idea.
Cyanide is "natural". Not everything natural is "good" and not everything artificial is "bad".
Yes, I don't disagree, but one of the main reasons why plastics are bad for you is that they don't break down, but natural materials seem to break down just fine generally speaking
Fun fact: ricin will kill you, castor oil is great, used internally and externally, especially cold pressed organic.
what's ricin and how does it relate to castor oil?
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/toxic-hepatitis/expert-answers/ricin/faq-20057863
To my understanding (though admittedly I'm not like a materials scientist or anything so take this with a grain of salt), "plastic" is a somewhat fuzzy term, the things it generally refers to are artificial polymers, but there are also a lot of naturally occurring polymers used in biology, and it's not like chemicals care if they're made by humans or not. One could call naturally occurring polymer materials plastic, but if you did that, you would have to say that, for example, things like wood and insect shells are made of plastic, which isn't really how people generally use that word. Naturally occurring ones are probably less likely to create "microplastic" type issues though because there has generally been enough time for stuff to evolve to break those materials down, whereas purely artificial ones are too recent for that.
Yeah, the natural stuff isn't really what we call "plastic", and it does break down better. The synthetic stuff is much more durable, which is the problem.
Birch tar is at least very close to plastic after it's hardened