FRUIT JUICES contain a range of vitamins that are good for our general health. Yet they are also often high in natural sugars, which cause tooth decay. In fact, dental erosion is irreversible. This is caused by acid attacking the surface of teeth. Citrus fruit juices, in particular, are very acidic.
Other forms of eating fruit are;
Fresh fruit
Frozen fruit as long as we make sure that food manufacturers have not added extra sugar. Frozen fruit is about as healthy as fresh fruit.
Canned fruit comes bathed in a sugar-rich heavy syrup. Due to this added sugar, canned fruit can be very harmful to your teeth.
Dried fruit
1 – The sugar is super-concentrated. When you dry fruit, almost all the water is lost, but no sugar is lost.
2 – Dried fruit is very sticky. I used to eat dried mangoes all of the time and found that they kept getting stuck in my teeth.
3 – When a fruit is dried, it releases a lot of the intrinsic sugars from inside of the fruit. These sugars are then available to feed the bacteria in your mouth, which can hurt your teeth.
4 – Dried fruit often has added sugar. This is another one of the ways that manufacturers can sneak sugar into our diet. Popular dried fruit like Craisins Dried Cranberries. And many brands of dried mangoes contain added sugar.
Preserved fruit, such as jellies and jams aren’t good for your teeth at all. The fruit is usually cooked, releasing lots of the intrinsic sugars and removing lots of water. Then, this mixture is thickened and bombarded with sugar.
Advise
Parents should be advised to give their children fruit juice especially as a treat once a week and accompanied by a meal to help reduce damage to the teeth. An appropriate amount is also very important, it’s recommended that one 150ml glass of fruit juice per day counts as one of the recommended five daily portions of fruit and vegetables.
Drinking more than one glass of juice a day does not count as more than one portion of fruit, as it does not contain the fiber found in whole fruit.
We might be thinking that juicing or blending raw fruit is a good idea but this only releases the natural sugars already in fruit which is worse for the teeth.
Experts recommend people continue to eat fruit but drink water afterward. This to wash away the acid or eat something containing calcium. Calcium rich foods are cheeses, which neutralizes an acid.