Drink Water and Save Your Teeth

Posted By: Gregory Kivett, Jr.

Regular cleanings and check-ups with your dentist while brushing twice daily and flossing once daily will go a long way in reducing cavities but even this is sometimes not enough to stop cavities. Cutting out added sugars is another step that can help reduce costly and painful cavities. To help cut our added sugars, check the label on your foods. The higher up sugar is on the ingredients, the higher the concentration of added sugar and the worse the food is for your teeth. Don’t like to take time reading labels? Then just follow this one easy tip, only drink water and you will probably cut out a large percentage of your added sugars.

A Sugar by Any Other Name

Cutting out added sugar sounds easy, but with all the different sugar based sweeteners the ingredients on your food may not even have sugar in the name. Here are some common names for sugar to look out for on food labels:

sugar
brown sugar
cane sugar
confectioners' or powdered sugar
turbinado sugar
raw sugar
corn sweeteners
corn syrup
crystallized cane sugar
maltose
fructose
sucrose

glucose
dextrin
evaporated cane juice
fruit juice concentrate
honey
high fructose corn syrup
invert sugar
syrup
malt syrup
maple syrup
molasses

Better Teeth May Be Just A Glass Away

If you are not into reading labels, you can try limiting some of the main culprits in added sugars in people diets. If you only drink water, you will cut out almost half of the added sugars in an average person’s diet. As an added bonus, drinking water increases hydration which limits another contributor to cavities, dry mouth. Here is the list of the main sugar culprits and their percentages.