Food Labelling & Your Oral Health
Food and drink – how it affects your teeth and gums.
What you eat and drink has a huge affect on the health of your teeth and gums. Although the perfect brushing technique, toothpaste, regular visits to Abbey Road Dental here in NW8, and a positive approach to oral health can go leaps and bounds towards keeping your pearly whites looking beautiful, a diet high in starch and sugar will have a negative effect on your teeth eventually.
These days it isn’t that easy to ensure you are eating and drinking the right things for a healthy mouth and body. Although a diet made up of wholefoods is ideal, it isn’t realistic. There are so many benefits to the convenience foods available to us, and a lot of people genuinely believe they are making the best choices by choosing items that state they are low sugar, low fat and healthier choices. The problem is, marketing is extremely clever these days and it isn’t very clear what is healthy and what isn’t.
This is where nutrition labels come in. They can help you choose which products you consume because they give you straightforward, honest information about the content of the food, without any sales or marketing.
Using Nutrition Labels To Help You Buy The Healthiest Products
Nutrition labels will give you information on calorie, fat, salt, saturated fat, carbohydrate, sugars and protein content. The panel will likely appear as a grid or table and describe the amount per 100 grams and then sometimes per the weight of the product (which is easier to work out). The tables are often paired with traffic light systems which show you which components are in the red zone i.e. high in that component, amber, where they are veering towards being high and then green when the component is considered to be present in low amounts. However, if the traffic light system is not in place you can consider that:
Fat
Anything more than 17.5 grams of fat per 100 grams is high, and anything less than 3 grams of fat per 100 grams is low.
Saturated Fat
Anything more than 5 grams of saturated fat per 100 grams is high, anything less than 1.5 grams of saturated fat per 100 grams is low.
Sugar
Anything more than 22.5 grams of sugar per 100 grams is high and anything less than 5 grams of sugar per 100 grams is low.
Salt (Sodium)
Anything more than 1.5 grams of salt per 100 grams is high and anything less than 0.3 grams of salt is low.
(Find more information from NHS Livewell)
Use Food Information & Labelling To Take Control of Your Health
Food labelling is much better than it used to be, and you can use it to your advantage if you get into the habit of checking labels before you buy a seemingly healthy food.
When it comes to your overall health, you’re looking for foods low in fat, salt and sugar. When it comes to your oral health, sugar is the one to look out for and it comes hidden in many seemingly innocent foods such as whole grain cereals and low fat yogurts. If you would like more advice on your diet and how it affects your teeth, please call Abbey Road Dental in St John’s Wood on 02076241603 or speak to us at your next checkup.
