5 Worst Foods for Teeth

Avoid these 5 types of foods if you want to keep your teeth healthy & beautiful

Practicing good oral hygiene is vital for keeping your teeth healthy and beautiful. While you can get away with eating, say, a carrot and not brushing immediately afterwards without risking undue damage to your teeth, you have to be more careful with certain other foods. These types of foods can harm teeth if you don’t make a point of brushing or rinsing immediately afterwards, so you might think twice about consuming the following 5 worst foods for teeth.

Dark Beverages

Dark beverages like coffee, tea, red wine, and soda are notorious for their ability to stain teeth. You can attempt to reduce the appearance of stains by using whitening toothpastes or getting whitening treatments from your dentist, but as long as you continue to indulge in these dark beverages you will be fighting an uphill battle against stains.

Sugary Foods

The bacteria naturally found in your mouth love sugar. Unfortunately, when they eat sugar they produce acid which can erode your tooth enamel and eventually lead to the formation of cavities. By avoiding sugary foods, you can deprive cavity-causing bacteria of the food they need to thrive.

Sticky Foods

Sticky foods can also be a problem simply because they adhere to teeth longer and are harder to brush or rinse away. Foods like dried fruit or taffy that are both sugary and sticky pack a real one-two punch for teeth.

Alcohol

Alcohol is bad for teeth because it reduces the production of saliva in the mouth. Since saliva helps remove food particles from teeth after eating and forms a protective barrier between acid and your teeth, the less saliva you the more vulnerable you will be to cavities.

Citric Acid

Low-pH foods that contain citric acid, like citrus fruits, soda, and many sports drinks, can dissolve the calcium salts on the surface of your teeth. Once this happens, the soft, decalcified surface becomes like a magnet for plaque, which further erodes the tooth enamel resulting in brittle, sensitive teeth that are increasingly vulnerable to decay.

Eat What You Want, But Brush Afterwards!

No dentist would insist that you give up the above foods completely. But you do need to be aware of the risks that they pose. Hopefully this will inspire you to limit the frequency with which you indulge in them and to increase your efforts to brush or at least rinse promptly after indulging to help keep your teeth healthier and more beautiful.