The reason it's a good idea to clean your teeth is because if you don't they'll stink and become discolored. It's not because it keeps them healthy, because cleaning your teeth strips some protection from bacteria and acids away from them while deepening the pockets around them, creating a nice place for disease to live.

The idea that intensely cleaning your teeth (and keeping them white) is healthy is an intuitive leap that marketers take advantage of, just like the bad intuition that makes people clean their faces intensely to get rid of skin problems. The reality is more complicated. Clean, pure, healthy, white.

Fossils have better teeth than we do, but we have prettier, less fragrant teeth.