Toothpastes which claim to be totally herbal use different preparations of herbs based either on ancient scientific literature or folk medicines. The absence of strict quality control rule for such preparations has provoked us to perform a real quality control test of the herbal toothpastes against five bacteria that were recovered from the dental caries. Five food-borne bacteria namely Listeria spp., Salmonella spp., Alcaligenes spp., Micrococcus spp. and Proteus spp. were isolated from the patients having dental caries. When ten known brands of herbal toothpastes were screened against these bacteria, not only the overall sensitivity was different for the tested toothpastes, their susceptibility towards individual bacteria differed a lot. The MIC differed 1000 times in most of the cases against individual bacteria. Salmonella sp. was the most resistant bacteria against tested samples.
