EAT

At EMMEZ, our EAT philosophy is simple: what enters your mouth affects everything. Your gut produces 90% of your serotonin. Your oral microbiome communicates directly with your gut through the oral-gut axis. The quality of what you consume—food, water, even toothpaste—shapes your microbiome, your immunity, your mental health, and your hormones.

So when we learned what was in our tap water, we had questions.

Most municipal water systems that fluoridate use hydrofluorosilicic acid—not pharmaceutical-grade fluoride like in toothpaste, but an industrial byproduct from fertilizer manufacturing that contains trace arsenic and lead. The CDC itself acknowledged in 2001 that "fluoride's predominant effect is posteruptive and topical"—meaning it works by touching teeth, not by drinking it.

If topical application works better, why drink it?

We also couldn't control the dose. Infants drinking formula get 5-7x more fluoride exposure (relative to body weight) than adults. There's no way to individualize it based on size, health status, or other fluoride sources. For us, systemic exposure we couldn't opt out of didn't align with our philosophy of informed, intentional choices about what enters our bodies.

We installed reverse osmosis filtration to remove fluoride from our drinking water.

This was our choice. It doesn't have to be yours. But you deserve the complete information to make your own.

— Leigh + Rach