Toothpaste, please

   Oral health care has made strides since baking soda, tooth powder, one size fits all toothbrushes and cigarette pack cellophane as floss. We now see designer decorations in the morning when we look in the mirror and we can choose bristles from soft to hard. Toothpaste replaces the powder, it can fight cavities, soothe sensitivities, whiten, and protect with fluoride and comes in travel size to reduce bulk in suitcases. Mouth rinses too, fight cavities and kill germs, comes in a variety of flavors from medicinal to mint with colors including green, orange and purple. There is also mechanized as well as portable brushes in case we want to tour room to room instead of staring at our selves in the mirror. We can also choose to have a waterspout to spray between our teeth instead of floss giving us to see what brushing and rinsing misses. All at reasonable prices for  the masses.

   It is now time for the industry to leap well into the future to further provide the burgeoning population with the benefits of oral health care. Science fiction movies have long shown us the progress of food dispensed by tube as we travel the planets. The future is now. The industry must recognize one of the joys of consuming a meal is taste. We enjoy the variety of flavors that linger on our palate, flavor also being the choice to consume more regardless of whether or not we have the hunger. Today's choice of flavors for after eating brushing overwhelms, shocking the gums with a cool mint eraser of a meal well prepared to please the discerning palate. It numbs the senses soon after a culinary respite, destroying hours of preparation to an appreciation of moments.

   Since the industry is now in the future, is it not time for us to choose to have the lingering flavor of a meatloaf delight, or a shrimp scampi as we walk back to work from lunch. Or how about garlic toast while we watch the soaps. Let's have some peach cobbler as we wait for traffic on the freeway, or some steak and onions for touch football. A hearty chicken soup will suit us well on a cold rainy day. We don't need the calories, just the pleasing after taste to occupy the senses long enough for us think we have had a meal instead of a medicinal measure to delete the experience of ingesting nourishment.