Junk food and dental health

Junk Food and Dental Health Junk food is called junk food because it's bad for you. In fact, if you look up the word 'junk' in a thesaurus, you'll find words like rubbish, garbage, trash, to name just a few.

Well, you wouldn't eat rubbish, would you? You wouldn't want to sit down for dinner tonight to a nice bowl of trash, right? And neither should you be eating junk food. Okay, maybe a little now and then isn't so bad, but making it a staple of your diet not only can cause your body serious health problems. It can also cause your dental health serious problems as well. Your teeth are an important part of your everyday life. Teeth help us chew; they help us speak properly; they help us to properly digest our foods so that our stomachs don't become overburdened in the digestive process. But they also are a vital part of your smile, and your smile is directly linked to your happiness. Following is important information from family dentists concerning the effects of junk food when it comes to dental health.

Brushing and flossing are vital to dental health. They get nasty food particles out from between teeth, and they help to wash away bad bacteria that can lead to plaque, that ugly word that leads to tooth decay. But brushing and flossing may be only half the story when it comes to healthy teeth and gums. Eating the right foods is also important.

And so is not eating the wrong foods. Junk foods that contain no nutritional value not only rob your body of vital nutrients because you're choosing them over nutritious foods. They also can damage your teeth, regardless of your daily oral hygiene routine. Junk foods that top the list as worst for teeth include starchy foods as well as sugary and processed foods.

Starchy junk foods Starchy foods are fodder for plaque. Plaque sees starchy foods as a feeding frenzy. It's like having a school of starch-loving piranha in your mouth every time you eat something starchy. Starchy foods are sticky. They clump up in your teeth, leaving food particles behind even for the most adept brusher. A diet filled with starchy junk foods such as French fries, potato chips, pretzels, and crackers is like ringing the dinner bill for plaque.

Look, a little starchy junk food every now and then is fine, but just like your mom used to say... don't make a meal of it. And, by all means, brush brush brush... and floss when you're done.

Sugary and processed junk foods Sugary and processed junk foods are a lot like starchy junk foods. The plaque loves 'em. In fact, if your sweet tooth had a sweet tooth, it would be made of 100 percent plaque.

(Gross!) Seriously, processed, sugary foods such as candy, cakes, sodas, cookies, and even sweet teas and iced coffees... these cause bad bacteria to hang around on your teeth like it's a teenager and your mouth is Friday night at the mall.

Disaster! Again, consuming sugary junk foods is okay once in awhile, but try to limit these to a couple times a week at the most. And, brush and floss after you eat them.

The negative effects on teeth of eating too many junk foods are great. Bad breath, tooth decay, tooth weakening leading to tooth fractures, and even loss of teeth... these are all the sad results of consuming too many junk foods. For healthy teeth and all their surrounding structures, limit intake of junk foods or eliminate them from your diet altogether.

A little junk food every now and then likely never killed anyone. And a piece of candy, cake, or other junk food also isn't going to cause serious problems to your dental health.

But junk food is called 'junk' because there's no value in eating it. There's no value to your body when you eat junk food, and there's certainly no value to your teeth. In fact, junk food can cause serious problems to oral health. Junky, sticky, processed, sugary foods are hazardous to teeth when they're overindulged in, and they can have serious consequences on teeth. And it doesn't just stop there. When not limited, junk food can lead to serious problems with gums and other structures of the mouth that can leave you looking at your teeth in a glass every night. For more information about foods that are healthy for teeth, talk to a family dentist in Clearwater at your next six-month checkup.