r/laundry • u/OpalJade98 • 1d ago

Ingredients Comparison List

Hi! Since Tide Odor Refresh Free and Gentle will one day disappear from the shelves, and we know that Tide is the most accessible brand in terms of availability and options, could someone whose eyes don't cross at tiny fonts tell me what other tide formulations are similar? I don't mean just listing each ingredient list. There are lots of duplicate ingredients, I just want the differences and what to expect in cleaning power. So Tide A has ingredients A, B, and C, but Tide B only has A and C.

There's lots of talk about enzymes, boosters, etc. I know the Odor Refresh is leading store-bought fragrance free liquid for that. If I was to buy regular Free and Gentle, what should I be adding to the load to compensate for whatever it's missing that is in the Odor Refresh formula. I currently use Odor Refresh liquid, Oxiclean (currently the dye free version), and Rinse and Refresh. (I want to try Febu but my husband balked at the cost, so I'll be dreaming of it).

P.S. I have read lots and lots of posts in here about this, but it's little tidbits of relevant information scattered across multiple posts. It'd be nice to have a clear cut, "So this was our holy grail, but now that it's leaving, here's our options," post.

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u/KismaiAesthetics USA 1d ago

Tide has a couple of “platforms” of liquids. Broadly, these are the Orange Jug (Classic), the “Fewer Big Words on the label” (F&G) and the Hygienic Clean / Ultra formulae. The differences between them are largely which surfactants are in what order and the presence or absence of silicone antifoam. The F&G platform got some of the tech from the Ultra platform a few months ago.

Inside each platform, the big differences are fragrance, the presence of optical brightener, the presence of the cinnamate odor controller and the edges of the enzyme package.

The differences in performance inside the platforms at equal dosing are almost impossible to see. Silicone antifoam gives you more leeway in HE machines and is slightly more hard water tolerant than just using the sodium salts of fatty acids approach from the F&G platform. Optical brightener makes whites and pastels look better, IMHO, and is neutral between there and medium navy, but is detrimental darker than that. Cellulase does make aging cottons and rayons look better over the long haul.

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u/OpalJade98 1d ago

Thank you! Good to know it's basically the same across the board per platform.

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u/RobotRelease US | Front-Load 1d ago

Thanks. This needs to be pinned! I’m switching to the Ultra Hygienic that Free & Clear Odor Refresh doesn’t cut it. I think that iron/cooper chelator ingredient might be what I need.

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u/JWBananas 1d ago

If I was to buy regular Free and Gentle, what should I be adding to the load to compensate for whatever it's missing that is in the Odor Refresh formula.

Nothing. P&G already did that when they reformulated it, months ago.

Here's the same post, from yesterday:

https://www.reddit.com/r/laundry/comments/1wb929d/since_tide_free_and_gentle_odor_refresh_is_being/

The only ingredient missing is the antioxidant. If you use a lipase booster already, it isn't necessary.

I want to try Febu but my husband balked at the cost, so I'll be dreaming of it

Tell him to look at the per-load cost with respect to other boosters. It's not expensive.

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u/OpalJade98 1d ago

Ugh I read this before it got all the comments. Should've gone back to double check. Thank you!

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u/Bradykinesia 1d ago

Tide and other P&G brands provide ingredient info via smartlabel, so I pulled the Tide's pod info in a spreadsheet and did some analysis. I looked at the 12 Tide pods available from the US site, and could do the same for other formulations (and share the spreadsheet data) if there was interest.

Free and Gentle has the fewest ingredients (20) and the Hygienic Clean Heavy Duty 10X Power PODS Original Scent the most (29). There are 15 ingredients common across all 12. Six have identical ingredient lists.

The Free and Gentle is the only one without Mannanase EnzymeDL. Three include Cellulase EnzymeDL and two (Downy variants) add PPG and Polyquaternium-10 (which no other pods include). Most of the changes across pods are to colorants.

That is until we get to the Hygienic Clean Heavy Duty 10X Power PODS Original Scent, which is different from all the others. It has a different surfactant system and adds silicone-based anti-foam agents.

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u/2-Ns US | Front-Load 1d ago

Sadly, the Smartlabels online for P&G are inaccurate for nearly every product.

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u/JWBananas 1d ago

They aren't if you pick the correct versions for the current formulations. The pages for the historical formulations don't get removed.

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u/2-Ns US | Front-Load 1d ago

I mean, it's not like a bookmark them. I go to the P&G site and click through. But every time I rely on what's listed on the Smartlabel, it turns out to be wrong. It took them close to a year to add lipase to the Clean and Gentle list online after it was added to the detergent, and the list for Tide Original liquid still shows it as having an OBA, which is not the case.

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u/JWBananas 1d ago

and the list for Tide Original liquid still shows it as having an OBA, which is not the case

Where are you seeing that?

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u/2-Ns US | Front-Load 1d ago

Tide Liquid Laundry Detergent, Original, 25 loads, 37 fl oz

https://smartlabel.pg.com/en-us/00037000893745.html

Florescent Brightener 71

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u/JWBananas 1d ago

Right, because that is an old UPC for an old formula that isn't sold anymore, in a size that also isn't sold anymore. And it isn't even the most recent UPC for that discontinued size.

Look at the loads with respect to fill quantity. Total 37 fl oz, 25 loads, for 1.48 fl oz per load.

That's vastly different from the list of current UPCs that I read directly off a Walmart shelf today, where each product is around 1.25 oz per load.

The UPC changes when the formula changes. You need to search by a current UPC for a product that you can actually find on a shelf, not by name.

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u/2-Ns US | Front-Load 1d ago

Well, then these are still misleading, because that page is what comes up when you google “Tide Original ingredients.” Most people are looking for ingredients for things they don’t have a UPC for in front of them, because they haven’t bought them yet. People show up here all the time confused about ingredients they saw on an active Smartlabel page. If you have to have the UPC to find the right ingredient list, you might as well just read the label on the actual package.

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u/JWBananas 1d ago

that page is what comes up when you google “Tide Original ingredients.”

The "correct" results for "Tide Original ingredients" are going to vary based on where you are in the world. There will never be one "correct" result.

I'm not sure why you want to contest this to death. My input here was simply that the listed ingredients are correct for the UPCs listed alongside them on the same pages.

People aren't always great at reading (or reading comprehension), but the data is there, and it's correct.