The ancient Greeks said eating figs caused the teeth to rot. Twentieth-Century parents say the culprit is candy. Both are right, but only
While most people tell their children not to eat sticky sweets like caramels and cream-filled cookies, what they should be telling them is to stay away from frequent snacks of fermentable carbohydrates, especially the kind that stick to your teeth.
In the 1970s, dental researchers discovered that it was not sugar alone that caused cavities; cooked starches-fermentable carbohydrates-also were culprits.
``The ramifications of that discovery are enormous,`` says Dr. Stephen Moss, chairman of the department of pediatrics at New York University.
Bread, cereals, potato chips, crackers and fruit, it turns out, will make holes in your teeth. Before carbohydrates can get to your stomach, saliva must turn them into sugar. When that sugar comes in contact with your teeth, it makes no difference whether it is in the form of maltose from milk, fructose from fruit, corn sugar or sucrose.
In other words, Moss says, ``a banana is not a dentally safe snack.``
Very few people have paid attention to this information, if they were aware of it at all.
Perhaps this is because Americans have been more concerned about making sure they eat bread, cereal and fruit for their overall health. To be told that these foods can rot your teeth is more than most health-conscious consumers want to deal with.
What is important to remember is that what may be harmless for your teeth may ee the issue from the perspective of dental health, ``nutritionists see the overall health perspective,`` says Dr. Carole Palmer, a co-head of the division of nutrition and preventive dentistry at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine in Boston.
There is more to this research than the fact that bread can cause cavities.
According to Moss, researchers now know that the amount of sugar in food is not terribly important to dental health. Whether a food contains 5 percent sugar or 15 percent sugar does not matter in terms of that food`s ability to cause cavities. More salient factors are the stickiness of the food and the frequency with which its sugar comes in contact with the teeth.
Palmer puts it this way: ``Whether you put one teaspoon of sugar in your coffee or three teaspoons of sugar in your coffee, it doesn`t make any difference if you still have six cups of coffee.`` It would be preferable, from a dental health point of view, Palmer says, ``to have six teaspoons of sugar in one cup of coffee than one teaspoon of sugar in six cups of coffee at various times during the day.``
If stickiness is a factor in the creation of cavities, caramels must be one of the most cariogenic (capable of producing cavities) foods in the world, right? Not at all.
``The human perception of stickiness,`` Moss says, ``is quite different from what actually sticks to the teeth.``
Because a caramel is pure sugar, it dissolves quickly, he explained. But a cream-filled cookie, a combination of starch and sugar, stays on the tooth surface longer and thus has a greater opportunity to cause cavities.
Research conducted by Dr. William H. Bowen, chairman of the department of dental research at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, indicates that cream-filled chocolate cookies are far more cariogenic than plain sucrose.
In an experiment with rats that were fed a single food, cookies caused more cavities than any of the other 18 foods tested, with the exception of raisins. Pre-sweetened cereals, which are more than 50 percent sugar, were twice as cariogenic as unsweetened cereals.
The least cariogenic of the foods tested were milk chocolate, popcorn, corn chips and sunflower seeds. Researchers believe that the fats in some of these foods may coat the teeth and decrease the amount of fermentable carbohydrates retained in the mouth.
If just about everything is capable of causing cavities, are there some foods that prevent them? Most researchers agree that peanuts and certain cheeses can protect against cavities; some dental experts would add chocolate, but there is disagreement about its role.
At a recent meeting of health professionals that was sponsored by the Dairy Council and the Dental Society of the State of New York, Bowen says those who believe chocolate is not cariogenic are wrong. Moss, on the other hand, lists chocolate as one food that may prevent cavities.
So, does this mean we should all buy a year`s supply of candy bars, along with a 100-pound wheel of Cheddar cheese, and simply take our lumps in terms of fat and cholesterol consumption, for the sake of our teeth?
Gladly, you do not have to choose between a heart attack and cavity-free teeth.
Moss, for example, says that if children brush their teeth with a fluoride toothpaste twice a day-once after breakfast and once before going to bed-they probably can snack safely two or three times a day. Safely, in this instance, means without getting cavities. Brushing twice a day builds a reservoir of fluoride on the teeth, he explained.
``It might be easier to get a child to brush twice a day than to get him not to snack,`` he says, adding that ``fluoride in toothpaste is more effective than fluoride in the water.`` Moss also recommended that dentists apply dental sealant on the biting surfaces of the teeth. -