Making sure your food choices are good for your teeth as well as your body.
We often don’t think of our dental health as having an impact on our overall health, or we think of these as two separate things. This isn’t the case, our lifestyle can impact our dental health, and our dental health can be an indicator of other health issues we might have.
With this in mind, leading a healthy lifestyle is as much a part of keeping your mouth and teeth healthy as keeping a good daily routine with brushing and flossing.
Eat to keep your teeth healthy
We all know that we should be eating 5 pieces of fruit and veg per day, but how much do we know about what we should be eating to ensure that our teeth are healthy and strong?
A healthy diet is also a great building block for healthy teeth overall. Eating a varied diet, rich in all the nutrients that we need, is a great way to ensure your oral health is maintained.
Keep sugar to a minimum
What you eat and drink can cause tooth decay, so it is important to make sure that you are eating well to avoid foods that might do this.
It is recommended that we eat only a little of foods which are high in fat and sugar. Limiting the amount of sugar that we eat in our diet helps to prevent tooth decayThe lay term for carious lesions in a tooth; decomposition of tooth structure.. One of the main causes of tooth decay is sugar.
Sugars that are found added to foods or that naturally occur in foods such as chocolate, sweets, jams, honey, smoothies, juices and more, should be kept to a minimum.
Sugars that are found in whole fruit and vegetables – i.e. fruit and vegetables that haven’t been made into a juice or smoothie – are less likely to cause tooth decay as the sugar is contained within the structure of the food. When juiced, this sugar is released, which is why we need to be careful with the amount of juice or smoothie we drink, and think about limiting them to mealtimes.
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