The sugar you are not counting.
Most of it is not in the lolly aisle. It is in the lunchbox.
A five-minute read for parents
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Eight slides. Save them for the next shop, or read the full guide below.
Teeth do not read labels.
The bacteria in your child’s mouth cannot tell organic from ordinary, or fruit sugar from table sugar. They turn all of it into acid.
So none of the things below are bad foods. They simply behave on teeth in a way the packet never mentions.
Juice, poppers and pouches.
- No added sugar still means sugar. Squeezing fruit releases it, and once it is out of the fruit it counts as free sugar.
- A popper at little lunch is a sugary drink with a straw, and a straw makes it last.
- A fruit pouch is the same thing through a spout, sucked slowly, straight across the front teeth.
If you do offer it, serve it in a cup with a meal and let them finish it, rather than carrying it around.
The health halo aisle.
- Flavoured yoghurt. Often several teaspoons of sugar per tub. Plain yoghurt with real fruit is a different food entirely.
- Muesli bars and snack bars. Usually held together with syrup, honey or glucose.
- Flavoured milk. Milk is good for teeth. Chocolate milk is a sweet drink.
- Breakfast cereals aimed at children, including the ones with fruit on the box.
Check sugars per 100 grams on the nutrition panel. It is the fastest thing to compare in a supermarket aisle.
The ones with no sugar on the label.
Crackers, crisps and white bread taste savoury, but refined starch breaks down into sugar in the mouth.
- Research on the cariogenic potential of foods found the worst offenders were those combining refined starch with sugar.
- Anything that packs into the grooves of the back molars sits there working long after the plate is cleared.
Mundorff and colleagues, Cariogenic Potential of Foods, Caries Research, 1990.
Sultanas and dried fruit.
You will have read that they glue themselves to teeth. The evidence for that is weaker than the reputation.
- A review of the research found the sticky claim rests on weak evidence, and one study found raisins do not stay on teeth longer than other foods.
- But they are still concentrated sugar, and other work does show real softening of enamel.
Where that leaves you. A small box with lunch is fine. A box picked at all afternoon in the car is not.
When beats whether.
- ✓Keep sweet things to mealtimes. There is more saliva at a meal and it clears faster.
- ✓Let it be finished rather than carried. A snack that lasts an hour is an hour of acid.
- ✓Water afterwards, always. It is the cheapest thing you can do for their teeth.
- ✓Nothing after the last brush except water.
- ✓Cheese, plain yoghurt, vegetables and plain water are the genuinely safe between-meal options.
Nothing here is banned.
You are not running a clean lunchbox. You are just moving a few things from all day to mealtime. Save this guide for the next shop.
Pair it with the free Star Book
For grown-ups only. We never ask children for their details.
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This guide is general information for parents. It isn’t a substitute for advice from your child’s dentist.
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