Breakfast Cereals and Tooth Decay

Which meals have the best cavity-causing potential? 

Practically half a century in the past at a Senate listening to on diet, a Dr. Nizel from Tufts suggested that sugary breakfast cereals “must be banned in the perfect curiosity for all involved, notably youngsters,” maybe not surprisingly, since he was a professor of dental medication. 

As I focus on in my video Flashback Friday: The Worst Food for Tooth Decay, a dozen completely different meals and drinks had been examined in a examine and ranked for his or her “cariogenic potential”—their cavity-causing potential—by implanting electrodes within the mouths of examine contributors to measure the quantity of acid produced within the plaque between their enamel after consuming a wide range of completely different meals. The 2 breakfast cereals examined topped the charts, as you’ll be able to see within the graph under and at 0:42 in my video. 

In case you drink sugar water, the pH in your enamel plunges inside minutes into the acidic hazard zone and stays there for an hour, consuming away at your enamel. Caramel is worse. It sticks to your enamel, so it stays longer, and your pH goes down even deeper into the acid zone. Nonetheless, with the 2 breakfast cereals (corn flake and wheat flake), it went down and stayed down even two hours later. 

We’ve known in regards to the cavity-causing potential of presweetened breakfast cereals for many years. As you’ll be able to see under and at 1:16 in my video, a dozen such cereals—Cookie Crisp, Cocoa Krispies, Froot Loops, Sugar Corn Pops, Sugar Frosted Flakes, Cap’n Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Powdered Donutz, Frosted Mini-Wheats, Grape-Nuts, Rice Krispies, and Cheerios—had been put to the take a look at to measure the extent of tooth-dissolving acid produced by the pressure of micro organism that causes cavities. As one would possibly anticipate, the cavity-generating potential was “discovered to be associated on to the sugar content material of every cereal,” although Frosted Mini-Wheats was an exception. Regardless of having 40 p.c much less sugar than cereals like Froot Loops or Frosted Flakes, Frosted Mini-Wheats prompted the best calcium demineralization, rating second solely to the now defunct “Powdered Donutz” in cavity-causing potential. A examine of 28 completely different cereals concluded, “Unquestionably, the sugar concentrations in these twenty-eight cereals are sufficiently excessive to qualify them as dentally harmful from that side.” 

Eager to be good company residents, Basic Mills took its Tremendous Sugar Crisp, which was 44 p.c sugar, and diminished the sugar—properly, it diminished the font measurement of the phrase “sugar” on the product field. Then, because it cares about youngsters’s well being a lot, it eliminated sugar altogether—from the product identify. Tremendous Sugar Crisp was renamed Tremendous Golden Crisp. 

Kellogg’s cares, too. Although Sugar Smacks is the place area power comes from, at the very least based on a traditional field of the product that includes a picture of Spock from Star Trek, it doesn’t sound as healthful as Honey Smacks, which it was later renamed. Similar cereal, healthier-sounding identify. Kellogg’s did take away sugar from Corn Pops and Frosted Flakes—from the entrance of the packing containers. 

And Cookie Crisp? I believe the truth that it’s made by a pet food firm, says all of it. 

However Basic Mills protests. A examine it did during which teenagers had been randomized to both obtain free cereal delivered to their houses or not discovered that those that obtained the cereal didn’t appear to get any extra cavities, supposedly proving that breakfast cereal is innocent to your enamel. Care to take a guess on the examine’s deadly flaw? The youngsters within the management group had been free to only have their dad and mom buy them sugary cereals from the shop, so each the experimental group and the management group might have been consuming the identical cereal “with the one distinction being that the experimental group obtained its cereal free and the management group youngsters paid for his or her cereal.” 

What did the Basic Mills researchers should say for themselves? “Dietary controls so inflexible as to exclude the ingestion of cereals by youngsters could be tough, if not inconceivable, in a long-term examine.” Then that’s not a management group! 

That is much like a sure Kellogg’s-funded paper that maintained if we didn’t feed children sugar, we might nearly get rid of cavities, however “this supreme is impractical.” So, Kellogg’s took the middle-ground and provide you with Froot Loops with marshmallows. A minimum of they’re fruit-shaped or at the very least “fruity formed”! 

Observational research have additionally did not hyperlink breakfast cereal consumption with cavity prevalence or incidence, although. That is presumed to be as a result of consuming cereal with milk helps clear meals particles from the mouth. Although Frosted Mini-Wheats did result in the identical sugar retention within the saliva ten minutes after consumption with or with out milk, the opposite cereals had been cleared out quicker. Nonetheless, “sugared cereals are sometimes eaten as snacks by children with out milk, which makes the sugar extra more likely to persist with the enamel…” 

Ten minutes after the ingestion of dry sugary cereals, you’re left with almost 50 instances the sugar residue in your mouth, in comparison with swishing down the sugar in liquid kind. The researchers concluded that “it’s inconceivable to contest the truth that frequent between-meal ingestion of high-sugar, bodily retentive merchandise, cereal or in any other case, is dentally hazardous. Whether or not or not meal-time consuming of sugared cereals induce caries [cavities] isn’t the purpose…as a result of appreciable quantities of them are eaten between meals, they’ve a marked potential for dental hazard.”  

Flashback Friday: Which Is a Better Breakfast—Cereal or Oatmeal? Keep tuned for the video popping out in just a few weeks and, within the meantime, try the best way to make A Better Breakfast.

Research just like the one from Basic Mills are the explanation it’s so essential to look past the headlines and why I dedicate a lot time to stating analysis flaws and crimson flags. The lesson is to all the time verify the first supply—or simply let me do it for you! 

Citrus may also have an acidifying impact on enamel, so all the time rinse after consuming it. See Plant-Based Diets: Dental Health to be taught extra. 

Relating to caring to your enamel, Don’t Use Antiseptic Mouthwash. Watch Flashback Friday: What’s the Best Mouthwash? for a greater possibility. Discover out How to Stop Tooth Decay.