Good oral health is essential to maintaining healthy teeth, gums and the overall health of your body. Several tips related to diet could help you improve the odds of maintaining good oral health. They include eating a well-balanced diet, limiting snacking and choosing healthy snacks, along with brushing and flossing regularly. Today, Americans appear to be consuming record amounts of sugary sodas, processed foods, fruit drinks and snacks. The average American eats about 147 pounds of sugar every year, according to the National Institutes of Health. People who consume such foods regularly put themselves at much higher risk for developing tooth decay and gum disease.

Balanced Diet

A poor diet has a significant impact on your oral health, as well as your overall health, especially eating sugary or starchy junk foods like candy, cookies, cakes, sodas and processed foods. An imbalanced diet leads to poor nutrition, which can cause oral health problems such as tooth decay, gum disease, premature tooth loss and bad breath. Your diet can also affect other aspects of your oral health. For example, poor nutrition can lead to severe gum disease and dental pain. In fact, if you lack proper nutrition you may experience symptoms in your mouths before the effects are felt in the rest of your body. On the other hand, a balanced diet boosts your body’s immune system, helps prevent oral disease and maintains strong teeth and healthy gums. Incidentally, some foods actually decrease the risk of tooth decay. Unsaturated fats alter the surface properties of tooth enamel, hamper the ability of sugar to dissolve and are toxic to oral bacteria. Proteins affect the ability of plaque to metabolize and increase saliva levels. Foods such as aged cheese help buffer acid when eaten soon after sugary or starchy foods.

Some important symptoms to be aware of are:

• Plenty of fruits and vegetables
• A moderate amount of protein
• Complex carbohydrates, like whole grains and beans
• Low fat dairy products
• Unsaturated fats

Sugary Drinks

Soft drinks, sweetened coffee and other sugary liquids that are sipped during the day provide an almost constant source of food for oral bacteria, leaving the teeth under constant attack for long periods at a time. In addition, soft drinks are acidic and usually contain phosphorus, both of which erode your tooth enamel and contribute to the development of more tooth decay than sugars. When bacteria feed on these sugars, they dissolve the minerals inside your tooth enamel (demineralization). Saliva, fluoride and foods such as vegetables and milk can help replenish these minerals (remineralization). However, in some cases your minerals are lost faster than they are regained. The result is tooth decay.

Snacking

Frequent snacking is particularly bad for oral health, because the cycle of acid creation and destruction of enamel repeats with each snacking session. The more often you eat, the greater the risk of damage to your enamel, because a constant supply of snack foods keeps the production of acid in the mouth at a high level. Therefore, the acid eating away at your teeth is never abated by the natural balancing force that saliva provides.