The foods found most protective against oral cancer include raw and green/leafy vegetables, tomatoes, citrus, and carrots. Citrus fruits are acidic, though. Fine; less oral cancer. But, what about the health of the teeth themselves? Might eating lots of sour fruit eat away at our enamel?
Well, early case reports that raised red flags involved things like “sucking [on] lemon wedges”—not, evidently, a good thing for your teeth. Or, “rampant” cavities, as a result of the “bizarre habit of sucking bananas.” Turns out you’re not supposed to give your preschooler a banana to suck on day and night as a pacifier. Juicing 18 oranges a day for a decade or two can also take quite a toll.
The conventional wisdom that fruit juice may be bad for your teeth, but not whole fruit, was challenged recently. The ability of fruits and their juices to erode enamel appears to be comparable, whether you’re eating grapes or grape juice, carrots or carrot juice, oranges, apples, tomatoes, or raisins.
Now, fruits and juices weren’t as bad as soda. Diet Coke takes the title for softening teeth the quickest. But, it was a surprise that fruits and their juices had comparable effects—a result no doubt celebrated by the study’s funders, the Sugar Bureau, as well as the Biscuit, Cake, Chocolate and Confectionery Association.
The spin the Dental Association put on it is interesting: If “eating fruits and vegetables as ‘whole’ foodstuffs may cause similar demineralisation in enamel to when they are consumed as a juice,” then, hey, maybe fruit juice is not so bad at all.
Of course, the glass-half-empty interpretation is that, wait a second, fruit is as bad as juice? Maybe, fruit is worse than we thought for our enamel. And, indeed, the latest research studying whether or not the consumption of fruit is cavity-causing found that “the frequency of fruit consumption was associated with higher odds” of cavities
