The kids go to the dentist

Yesterday was family trip to the dentist day. It is always a worry as you never know what the dentist might say and with Elizabeth losing so many milk teeth and her big ones growing in I was hoping that we wouldn’t get any bad news. 

Thankfully all was fine, brilliant in fact and apart from a small amount of fluoride polish on the back adult teeth for both girls we were told to keep doing what we are doing.

This does make me wonder though, I mean the kids brush their teeth every day but Alison uses adult toothpaste and Elizabeth uses childrens toothpaste and pretty much washes it all off the toothbrush. They both drink fruit juice and fizzy drinks and they eat a fair amount of sweets and yet if I went by what the newspapers say their teeth should be rotting out of their mouths.

I went to an event with Tropicana a few weeks ago and whilst I was there I got the chance to talk with Independent Nutritionist Fiona Hunter who gave me these fantastic tips.

Handy tips:

·         Brush teeth before eating breakfast, rather than after to minimise tooth enamel erosion. The enamel can be softened after eating, especially if it is something acidic

·         Brush teeth 1 hour after eating to give your enamel time to harden, but that’s not an excuse children can use for not brushing their teeth or going to bed

·         Fiona Hunter says you can give your children 100% juice at meal times and get kids to drink juice through a straw, this will help to reduce contact between juice and teeth

·         For more advice how to look after your teeth go to The British Dental Health Foundation’s web site 

·         The risk to dental health of any food or drink can be minimised by good dental hygiene and regular visits to the dentist!

So all these newspaper articles about juice rotting teeth shows that actually drinking 100% fruit juice is no worse than eating a piece of fruit, in fact it is slightly better because unless you swill the juice around your mouth the juice is in contact with you teeth less than the fruit would be. 

I was really shocked to hear the girls should brush their teeth before breakfast and not after breakfast so that is one change we will be making but apart from that we will be continuing to give the girls a balanced diet, get them to brush regularly and visit the dentist as required for check ups.