Dentists recommend healthy foods for children’s oral hygiene

You wouldn’t send your children to school with a lunchbox full of candy bars, but you might be packing almost as much sugar when you send them off with some popular lunchtime classics. Considering most children brush their teeth in the morning and before bed, the sugar they put in their mouths at lunchtime could stay there for a while, and that worries some dentists.

“When you start adding up the sugars found in some common lunchbox items, you might be shocked,” said George Koumaras, DDS, dental director for Delta Dental of Virginia. “Simple changes can lower the sugar count, which is better for children’s oral health and, ultimately, better for their bodies.”

Take the classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Add a box of raisins, a small container of applesauce and a single-serve carton of chocolate milk. While it sounds healthy, the sugar total is a whopping 98 grams. An average candy bar contains about 25 grams of sugar.

Without drastic changes, give this same lunch a sugar makeover:

• Choose natural peanut butter (no added sugar) and low or no sugar added jelly.
• Replace white bread with whole wheat, and regular applesauce with natural applesauce.
• Swap raisins for mini carrots--raisins’ stickiness can hold sugars against teeth for prolonged periods.
• Trade chocolate milk for white milk.

The new total? A more tooth-tolerable 31 grams of sugar.

Alternatives to lunchbox standards:

• A tube of yogurt boosts calcium with only 10 grams of sugar.
• String cheese offers calcium and zero grams of sugar.
• Fruit roll-up snacks have 7 grams of sugar versus fruit snacks in a pouch with 14 grams.
• Three vanilla wafer cookies have 4 grams of sugar versus three chocolate, crème-filled cookies with 13 grams.

If not removed by brushing and flossing, sugars can contribute to tooth decay and cavities. Naturally occurring bacteria in the human mouth form a colorless, sticky film called plaque. Cavity-causing organisms within plaque feed on sugar and turn it into acid. This acid attacks tooth enamel and leads to tooth decay.

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