Cleaning your teeth is nothing if not tedious, which helps explain why brands like Crest and Colgate increasingly taste like Halloween treats. But if you ask me, oral hygiene should be dull and punishing, the way God and your dentist intended: You should finish feeling virtuous and above all, clean, not like you've gotten away with something. Which is why I use Weleda's drab, homely—and absolutely fantastic—salt toothpaste.

Thick, silty, the color of fresh mud (to put it kindly), the stuff ain't pretty (though I do like the modish, glitter-free packaging). Don't go reading the ingredients, either—the European doctors who concocted the stuff may have been enraptured by "horse chestnut," but I'd rather not think about rubbing it on my teeth. Drawing on the stain-removing power of baking soda—long before American toothpastes caught on to the Arm & Hammer phenomenon—Weleda's paste leaves your mouth almost shockingly clean. Just one word of warning (well, aside from the stuff about it being thick and silty): Weleda's is fluoride free, so you shouldn't use it every day. What you brush with on your off days is up to you, of course, though for safety reasons I recommend steering clear of Crest Extreme Mint Explosion.
Weleda Salt toothpaste, $5 for 3.3 oz tube, available at select Whole Body by Whole Foods Market stores and at shop.weleda.com