A huge number of people share a common nightmare where they experience 1 or more of their teeth falling out. It’s linked to our common sense of insecurity about the way we look, and teeth are a big part of that. And yet, every day we place our teeth under assault with the various food and drinks that we put in our mouths to chew and swallow.
If you’re unsure about what certain food is doing to your teeth, you can either find a dentist in Baxter today and ask them directly, or you can read on and find out about some common foods that are just awful for your teeth.
Table of Contents
1. Sour Candy
This one shouldn’t come as any surprise. Candy — essentially just blocks of sugar — are known to be terrible for our teeth. You might, however, be wondering why we’ve specific sour candy as opposed to all candy in general. While all candy is terrible for your teeth, sour candy holds a special place in the dentist hall of shame because of the elevated levels of acid that are even tougher on your teeth than with regular candy.
Sour candy often comes in the form of gummy and chewy sweets which are stickier, too, and therefore stay on your teeth for a longer time and are more likely to result in tooth decay. When you’re really desperate for something sweet, it’s interesting that a chocolate bar would be better for your teeth than a bag of sour candy, so think about that!
2. Bread
Could the next item in our list be any further away from sour candy? Perhaps not. Bread isn’t sweet…it’s not acidic (is it?)…it’s just…bread. What’s so bad about it? Well, bread is a heavy and starchy food staple that when you chew with your teeth, gets broken down by your saliva and converts those starches into sugar.
What’s more, because bread is so soft, the saliva quickly turns it into a paste-like texture, which then easily becomes stuck all over the surfaces and in the crevices of your teeth like plaster being wafted over a wall surface with a trowel. There it remains and there’s a good chance you won’t get it all out when you brush because of how embedded in between your teeth it can get.
3. Citrus Fruit
After reading the first one, the acidity of citrus fruit, as well as things made from it including fruit juices, make it less surprising that it would appear on this list. However, aren’t citrus fruits like oranges also loaded with vitamin C? Isn’t vitamin C a key nutriDentistsent to prevent horrendous teeth-destroying illnesses like scurvy? Well, yes, but that’s a balance you have to strike. You need vitamin C, but excessive consumption of citrus fruit is too acidic on the teeth.
4. Dried Fruit
OK, things are getting weird now. and other experts are always encouraging Australians to eat more fruit each day, so why has fruit appeared twice in a list of foods that are bad for teeth. Well, citrus was about the acid, but with dried fruits, it’s the stickiness and chewiness that is the problem. In a similar way to sour candy, they can get caught in between the [teeth], leaving hard-to-reach sugar sitting atop teeth just waiting to create a cavity.
5. Potato Chips
Arguably the world’s favorite unhealthy snack, potato chips are bad for your teeth for the same reasons that bread is. The starches get broken down by your saliva and converted into sugars which get stuck in between your [teeth] and create a smorgasbord of nutrition for that nasty plaque. If you consume an entire bag of potato chips, it’s really important that you floss afterward to try and remove as many of the excess particles as possible.