Breakfast the most important meal of the day?
There's been a lot of talk about sugar in your breakfast recently. The reason that this is so vital for dental health, is because what you eat in the morning will stay with you the whole day. Often, the next time people will brush their teeth is at night, and so if you have something really sugary in the morning, changes are it's going to have a long time to damage your teeth.
N.H.S. Article
The artcle above is from the NHS where it ranks some of the 'worst offenders', unfortunately we can see that most of those are marketed heavily towards children! As is all too common, even 'healthy' foods marketted towards adults were amongst the top in terms of sugar.
Types of sugar
Of course it's not as simple as just looking at the sugar in the meal, some sugars will be healthier, and less damaging to your teeth to boot. For example, whole fruits contain sugar, but since you they come whole and are swallowed in large pieces, less of the sugar inside the fruit will be released to damage your teeth.
Generally, the more 'simple' or broken down the sugar is, the more of it will be available to harm your teeth, and your body. So eating a smoothy full of raspberries, will unfortunately damage the teeth more than eating the exact same amount of raspberries whole!
A rule of thumb for how much sugar you give your child
A final tip, have a look at 'carbohydrates - of which sugar' per portion on cereal boxes, or cereal bars. A good rule is 4g of sugar is a teapsoon. Check that cereal bar next time before you pack it in your childs lunchbox and see that it contains about FOUR teaspoons of sugar!
Dr John Bresnan
