10 Cavity-Causing Foods That Most People Are Surprised To Learn About

There are a lot of big ticket items to be worried about with your kids: academics, obesity, social development… the list goes on and on. Oral health is one of those that doesn’t get brought up too often. It might be because of this that oral health among children is so poor. While tooth decay has been slowly declining since the 1960’s, it’s still frightening to see how bad things till are. A quick browse through the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Health’s website will show us how dismal things really are:

23% of children from ages 2-11 have untreated dental cavities
On average, children ages 2-11 have at least one decayed primary tooth

One in two children ages 6 to 11 have decay in at least on permanent tooth

Things don’t get much better as kids get older either. According to a recent report from the CDC, three in five adolescents ages 12-19 had experienced at least one cavity, and 15% of them currently had one. Tooth decay is a major problem in today’s youth that needs more focus.

Tooth Decay Explained

So why is it kids struggle so much with tooth decay and cavities? First, let’s look at exactly what tooth decay actually is beyond “it’s something bad that happens to our teeth.”

According to WebMD, tooth decay is “damage that occurs when germs (bacteria) in your mouth make acids that eat away at a tooth”. The basics are pretty simple. When you eat food, the bacteria in your mouth feed on the sugar in that food – it’s essentially what they eat. As they eat they produce acid. This acid wears away at the outer layer of your teeth (the enamel) over time. You teeth can reproduce this enamel, but that often happens much slower than the enamel is worn away. As the enamel decays and is worn down it can expose the two inner layers of your teeth, the dentin, and the pulp. This is a cavity, and the exposure of those two inner layers can cause a significant increase in sensitivity along with tooth pain.

What Causes Cavities and Tooth Decay?

What causes tooth decay in the first place? There are two major causes that contribute to tooth decay in a major way. The first of these is poor brushing habits. Simply put, most children take awful care of their teeth. You’ll be lucky if you get a quick 30-second brush and a swish of mouthwash out of them. According to a study published by GlaxoSmithKline, brushing for a full two minutes removes over 25% more plaque than brushing for 45 seconds. Add that to the fact that only 22 percent of children floss in the first place and you’ve already got a recipe for disaster.

Common foods that contribute to cavities include:

Candy (the most obvious culprit, but not the only one)
Lemon juice

Oranges and other citrus fruits
Sodas
Fruit juice

Pickles
Vinegars
Refined bread (including “whole wheat”)

Chips and crackers
Pasta

Alongside poor dental habits is the variety of sugary and acidic foods that we eat. Food and drink that’s high in sugar allow for the bacteria in your mouth to feed more rapidly. More feeding means more acid, which in turn means more enamel erosion. Every time you eat or drink something that has sugar, it takes on average about 20 minutes to get rid of the acid it produces. This means something like a lollipop or a sugary lozenge of some sort can produce an acid attack that lasts an hour or longer. The worst offenders with regards to sugar are suckers, lozenges, soft drinks, fruity drinks, candy and many types of fruit.

Fruits and berries are delicious and nutritional, but they’re pretty horrible when it comes to your teeth.

In addition to the issue of sugar is the large number of acid products we ingest. Even diet sodas which are marketed with lower sugar content have a high level of acidity. This does the exact same thing to your teeth that the acid from the bacteria does – it just cuts out the middleman. Furthermore, many of the foods we’re told to give to our children for other health reasons can be pretty terrible for your teeth. You might expect products like sugary juice and soft drinks to wear away at teeth, but even foods like lemons, oranges and pickles can eat away at the outer surfaces of teeth. Anything that contains citric acid and/or vinegar can help to cause cavities.

Tooth Decay and Cavity Prevention

Now that we know the major causes, a simple question comes to mind: what can we do? What are the best ways to prevent tooth decay in children? Below we’ve got a few simple but incredibly effective techniques on how to keep your kid’s mouth health and free from cavities.

Have a Discussion

Before you try anything else, simply sit down and talk with your kid(s) about their teeth. Having an in-depth, informative discussion with them will teach them why keeping their teeth healthy is important. This will help tremendously in the future when they want to know why you won’t let them drink another Mountain Dew, eat another sucker, or tell them to brush before bed.

Keeping your kids informed will help start understanding how to properly take care of themselves. As they continue to grow they’ll start to form new habits based on their knowledge. The more knowledge they’ve got on how to keep their mouth healthy, the better habits they’ll form.

Proper Brushing Habits

The single biggest thing you can do to help keep your child’s oral health top shape is to get them to brush and floss properly. There’s an extremely good chance that they’re not brushing for the full dentist recommended two minutes and an even smaller chance that they floss. Keeping a healthy oral routine is simple – just make sure they do three main things:

Brush all parts of their mouth for two minutes twice a day. Be sure they brush the exterior of teeth, interior of teeth, molars/wisdom teeth, gums and the back of their tongue.
Floss between every tooth. Proper technique suggests spending between 10-15 seconds per tooth flossing, but if you get them up to 5 that’ll be good. If you’ve got a bit of extra cash, a water flosser can also be a fantastic option for flossing that takes a bit less time and is a bit more exciting.

Rinse with mouthwash for 60 seconds after they’re done brushing and flossing. This will get rid of all the extra plaque, improve their breath and help their gums as well. Also, try to keep them from drinking or eating for 30 minutes after they rinse. The mouthwash will continue to work to kill the bacteria for a full half hour afterwards. If they’ve got issues lasting the full 60 seconds, try out an alcohol-free mouthwash. You’ll still get all of the cleaning benefits without the strong burn.

If you’re having a hard time getting new ideas to stick, keep in mind that it takes a while for a new habit to form. Everyone tosses around the 21-day, theory, but in fact, it takes on average 66 days for a habit to become commonplace and repetitious. Try getting your child a calendar that they can continually mark up every time they’ve been successful at brushing their teeth for two minutes. Having something that they can see, decorate, and interact with will really help their interest.

Make sure to time your brushing for a full two minutes to get rid of all the plaque, bacteria, and germs!

Make a Game

Depending on how young your kids are, a game or distraction can be a fantastic way to encourage them to brush. I’ve found that the more I distract them from brushing, the more they’re interested in doing it. Anything from watching a youtube video, listening to a song, or having a brush-off dance-off contest can work really well. The sky is the limit here, so get creative and figure out what works best to keep your kids occupied for 120 seconds (as hard as that may be!).

Rewards

We reward our kids for good grades, winning a sport’s game, being kind, and all sorts of other things. Why not give them a small reward for keeping their mouth healthy too? Taking the out to dinner (a healthy one!), giving them a little paper certificate or letting them pick the next movie can be a great way to reward them after an A-Okay from the dentist. This all depends on your parenting technique, but I’ve found positive reinforcement in this area works the best.

Conclusion

Keeping your kid’s mouth healthy isn’t the hardest thing in the world, but if you don’t focus on it there can be major consequences in the future. Crowns and other implants can easily cost over a grand, tooth replacements are upwards for $4k and dentures can set you back several thousand dollars for good ones. Beyond that, simply getting a cavity filled can cost over a hundred dollars, and periodontal cleanings can take several hours and cost several hundred. It’s way easier to simply brush twice a day for two minutes, floss and rinse. They’ll appreciate it when they’ll older.

Sources:

CDC: ‘Disparities in caries continue’ (n.d.). Retrieved August 12, 2016, from http://www.ada.org/en/publications/ada-news/2015-archive/march/cdc-disparities-in-caries-continue

Content – Health Encyclopedia – University of Rochester Medical Center. (n.d.). Retrieved August 12, 2016, from https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=1

Delta Dental News Room. (n.d.). Retrieved August 12, 2016, from https://www.deltadental.com/Public/NewsMedia/NewsReleaseFlossYourLoss201310.jsp

Dental Caries (Tooth Decay) in Children (Age 2 to 11). (n.d.). Retrieved August 12, 2016, from http://www.nidcr.nih.gov/DataStatistics/FindDataByTopic/DentalCaries/DentalCariesChildren2to11.htm

Result Filters. (n.d.). Retrieved August 12, 2016, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19723429

Sugar-Free Doesn’t Mean Worry-Free | BU Today | Boston University. (n.d.). Retrieved August 12, 2016, from http://www.bu.edu/today/2011/sugar-free-doesn’t-mean-worry-free/

Tooth Decay-Topic Overview. (n.d.). Retrieved August 12, 2016, from http://www.webmd.com/oral-health/tc/tooth-decay-topic-overview