From the Calgary Herald (April 8, 2009):
Those 10 Hershey chocolate Kisses sitting in front of you are mighty tempting. And you know that by the time the evening is over and CSI Miami’s Horatio Caine fiddles with his sunglasses one last time, those Kisses will be gone. What you may not know, however, is your teeth would have been better off if you stuffed all 10 of those tooth-aching treats into your mouth all at once and were done with it.
As Janet Lockau, a dietitian with the University of Alberta’s dental hygiene program, says: “Timing is actually everything” when it comes to nutrition and oral health.
It’s not that 10 pieces of candy have much, if anything, to do with nutrition, but they do have lots of sugar that feeds the bacteria in your mouth. When the bacteria feed, they produce acid, and it’s the acid that can wreak havoc with your movie-star smile. Eat them all at once and you face two-or-so hours of acid production. Eat them over a sequence of hours, and the enamel and tissue-destroying acid is there that much longer. Saliva, which works to neutralize the acid, doesn’t have a chance to work its magic if you keep feeding the bugs.
Such knowledge about nutrition can help you keep both your health and your teeth for a lifetime. The link between nutrition and oral health is very real and it’s forged even before we’re born, Lockau said. “Actually, tooth development (in the womb) begins in three to six weeks, and the mother’s diet can have an impact on the child’s tooth development and strength of the enamel and, certainly, if the enamel is defective, children are more prone to develop cavities.”
It is fairly common knowledge expectant mothers should avoid alcohol and excessive quantities of caffeine-laced food and drink. But all-around nutrition is more about what you should eat and drink and, Lockau said, that information is easily found in the Canada Food Guide that “provides us with guidelines specifically geared toward age groups, gender and special needs.”
“Nutrition is important for bone health,” she said. “The teeth are supported in soft tissues, but the teeth are actually held in place by bone.”
As well, the soft tissue — gums and ligaments –depend on a lot of nutrients. Nutrients are the building blocks of the body and there are major concerns that the foundations of the building are eroding, especially for children. “The main concern with children, we’re finding, is that milk is being replaced by fruit juices, fruit drinks, iced tea.”
The replacement fluids are sugar-heavy and, while milk has natural sugars of its own, it also provides important calcium and vitamin D, which helps the body process the calcium. Another problem is that providing children with all-day, all-night access to sippy cups and bottles lessens their appetite for other food with other minerals and nutrients important for general and oral health, like vitamin C, used to form collagen in bones, various forms of vitamin B, important to the health of soft tissue (including the tongue) and antioxidants vitamin A and D. “Lack of nutrition can lead to periodontal disease, which loosens soft tissues and may even result in bone loss,” Lockau said.
And periodontal disease is one of the major causes of bone loss — and tooth loss– in adults.
Nutritional concerns carry on into adolescence, she said. There is a social factor in eating, “particularly in the adolescent population, there’s a lot of peer pressure to choose a lot of those fast foods and junk foods.”
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Another contributing factor to poor nutritional habits in adolescents is the disintegration of the family meal, Lockau said. Studies show that fewer and fewer families sit down and eat regularly together, and “that has a huge impact on the types of foods that children choose or are available to them. They’re on their own, grabbing take-out foods.”
And the need for nutrition doesn’t stop in adults. Take milk, for instance, which many adults eschew. “The need for milk actually increases as we age,” Lockau said.
The Canada Food Guide says we should have two to three servings a day for adults, increasing to three servings a day after 51. The recommendations are based on calcium requirements. As a bonus, acid production from the sugars in milk and 100-per-cent fruit juice last only about 30 minutes, as opposed to two hours for high-sugar foods, she said.
Natural foods are the best way to get essential minerals and nutrients, she said, but it’s a good idea if people, for some reason, can’t consume enough milk, that they take calcium supplements and a vitamin B supplement along with that. People with allergies should consult a dietitian, she said.
As we age, the lack of nutrition, poor oral health and subsequent dental problems come back to haunt us. “Older people with dental problems, dentures or partial dentures that don’t fit right can have nutritional problems. Basically, we’re finding that poor oral health can be one of the major causes of unexplained weight loss among the elderly.”
CHEW ON THIS
- The Canada Food Guide website, www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/index-eng.php, has EATtracker, an interactive, individualized tool that can tell you how you’re doing with your diet.
- Potatoes themselves are a starch and don’t tend to cause cavities, but processing the potato into a chip turns the starch to sugar.
- Protein-based food doesn’t tend to cause acid production. Things like vegetables, nuts, cheese and popcorn are healthy.
- Cheese, especially hard cheese, stops the acid production in the mouth. Sugarless gum with xylitol, a sugar substitute, also stops acid production.
