What Food to Eat and Avoid For a Child’s Dental Health
Experts and medical professionals agree that children need food from all the major groups to stay healthy. However, certain foods help maintain good oral health while others can cause cavities or tooth decay. For example, too many carbohydrates, sugars, starches, and savory foods can cause tooth decay. In addition, how long these carbohydrates remain in your oral cavity will influence the severity of tooth decay.
As parents, it is important to know what kind of foods your kids should get more of and what they need to consume in minute quantities. Here is a guide to what’s best and what’s bad for a child’s teeth.
The Best Foods for Your Child’s Oral Health
Some of the best foods that are recommended by our dentistry in Emerson, NJ, to keep your child’s dental health include:
- Apples, Celery, Carrots, and Cucumber
Apples, cucumbers, carrots, and celery are among the best foods for your child’s teeth. These crisp and crunchy foods help clean the teeth by removing plaque. In addition, apples have a high fiber content that boosts saliva flow, while celery is naturally stringy and can work on flossing your teeth.
These fruits and veggies can be healthy snack options for their teeth. You can make these snacks appealing by serving the apples with a bit of almond butter. The carrots, celery, and cucumbers can also go with a low-fat yogurt dip.
- Melons, Strawberries, and Pears
These fruits contain about 85% water, thus making them great for boosting your child’s oral health and hydration. In addition, fruits like watermelon have potassium, vitamin C, and lycopene nutrients that are great for your bone health and heart. Such nutrients are also important in reducing the risk of gum disease.
When eating fruits with higher sugar content, it is important to brush your child’s teeth afterward, and these fruits may include mangos, bananas, raisins, cherries, and figs.
- Milk, Yoghurt, and Cheese
These dairy options are important in promoting stronger and better-protected teeth. This is because they have a high amount of calcium, phosphates, and Vitamin D. Eating cheese increases the saliva in your child’s mouth, which helps remove food particles from your teeth and thus can prevent cavities.
Sugar-free yogurt has healthy bacteria that can improve gut and oral health by reducing bacteria causing infection. Frozen yogurt can also be an alternative to ice cream as it contains low sugar.
- Water
Water is one of the best, highly recommended drinks when it comes to your oral health. Drinking plenty of water helps flush out food particles and toxins from your mouth. It also keeps your child well hydrated, thus resulting in fresher breath. Water that’s added fluoride is also essential as fluoride is important for healthy teeth development.
Foods to Avoid for Your Child’s Oral Health
Some of the worst foods which are not recommended in our pediatric dental care that your child should avoid taking include:
- Candies
Candies are bad food for your gums and teeth due to their high sugar content. Hard candies like lollipops can also lead to cavities. In addition, as your child sucks the candy, the sugar coating produced may get stuck into teeth.
Cheeky candies will stick on your child’s teeth and wear down their enamel, including caramels, jelly beans, and gummies. The gummies may also get into areas of your teeth that can be difficult to reach, even with proper brushing.
- Citrus Fruits
Lemons, oranges, and grapefruits have high acidity, thus making them bad for your dental health. In addition, eating too many citrus fruits can wear your tooth’s enamel.
- Refined Carbohydrates and Starches
Most carbohydrates are bad for your teeth, for instance, baked goods, cake, pasta, and white bread. The refined carbs may turn into sugar after being digested.
Potato chips and pretzels are other culprits since starchy foods can stick to your child’s teeth and cause decay.
If you are looking for a pediatric dentist near you that can advise you on the kind of dental and lifestyle practices that are safe and necessary for your child to have ideal oral health, visit Emerson Family Dental.