The Best and Worst Drinks for Pediatric Oral Health

With a little bit of education and action, you can keep your whole family’s mouths healthy.

St Louis Pediatric Dentistry

Many stresses come with parenting, and one of them is what to feed your child. Not only is it difficult to spend the time and energy preparing healthy food and drinks, but with all the misinformation in the health industry, those health foods might not be healthy at all! This is no reason to give up, though. The correct information is out there, and once you understand it, you will be able to give your child everything they need.

What Makes a Drink Good or Bad?

Two primary factors make something unhealthy for your teeth. They are sugar and acidity. If the drink you have chosen has either of those, it will generally be bad for your oral health. What makes a drink good is essentially just the opposite: Anything without sugar or acidity.

The Best

  • Water – The most important drink of all is water. It does not compromise your oral health one bit and does many things to improve it. Being hydrated and having a moist mouth does wonders for your teeth. Whenever possible, choose water over other drinks.
  • Green & Herbal Tea – This beverage is essentially the closest thing you can get to pure water. Dried plants lightly flavor it, but those plants do not add anything to it that hurt teeth.

The Worst

  • Soda – When it comes to teeth, soda is the worst of the worst. As we discussed above, sugar is one of the primary factors in a drink being bad for your teeth. Well, soda has the highest sugar content of any beverage, with around forty grams in a single twelve-ounce can! Making things even worse, soda is also acidic. You should avoid soda whenever possible.
  • Sports Drinks – These beverages have long been marketed themselves as healthy drinks for athletes, but this is really not the case. What sports drinks look like on a chemical level is fruity soda without the carbonation. They are high in sugar and acidity, and they should be cut out of your child’s diet.
  • Juice – Here we have another product that is marketed as healthy, but is bad for teeth. Juice’s one redeeming quality is that depending on the fruits in it, it can have some nutrients. Aside from that, a child drinking juice is relatively similar to a child drinking soda.
  • Coffee – Though coffee is more of an adult beverage, there are still many teens that get a taste for it. Not only is sugar often added to it, but coffee itself is also very acidic, making it a drink you should minimize.
  • Sparkling Water – This product is often used as a soda replacement, and it is a lot better than soda, but it still has its issues. The primary one is the acidity of the sweeteners used.

With a little bit of education and action, you can keep your whole family’s mouths healthy. If a potential drink is on this list, then follow our advice. If not, then look at what makes a drink good or bad and try to figure it out.

St. Louis Pediatric Dentistry

In addition to eating and drinking things that promote good oral health, regular trips to the dentist are equally important. At The Dental Anesthesia Center, your child’s initial oral examination will include a visual examination, charting, diagnosis and treatment recommendations. We work hard to make your child feel at ease by providing exceptional patient care in a relaxed, convenient atmosphere.

Call us today to schedule your appointment at (314) 862-7844. We look forward to meeting you!

Updated: February 13, 2019

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