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Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Does Cheese Make Your Teeth White?

We think of cheese as a good pairing for wine and even as a good match for a sweet or rich dessert like hot apple pie. How about cheese as an antidote for the staining and discoloring of your teeth that all those sweet and acidic treats can bring?

Cheese Neutralizes Acid PH

Hard Cheese like Cheddar contains alkali. It helps neutralize the pH of the mouth after imbibing in wines for dinner or for holiday cheer. It also helps stimulate saliva production, which in itself reduces the mouth's acidity. So serving cheese with wine is a perfect pairing not just for the taste, but for the health of the mouth as well. It must be a hard cheese to accomplish this, however. Soft cheese like brie, camembert or feta will not have as much as an effect.

It should be noted that many things increase acidity in the mouth (and hence, staining) and can be balanced out by eating a simple block of cheese:

· Wine, red or white

· Fruit juice

· Coffee or black tea

· Cherries or other berries

· Cola

The acidic environment is unhealthy for the mouth because it is healthy for types of bacteria you do not want growing in your mouth. So, eating just a small piece of cheese is going to neutralize this environment, and render the environment negative for this bacteria.

Calcium and Phosphate Increase Health of Teeth

Cheese, along with other dairy products like milk and yogurt, contains a high level of calcium and phosphate. The calcium and phosphate in cheese re-mineralize the surface of the teeth, helping them to look healthier and whiter. The healthier one's tooth surfaces are, the whiter they will appear, and the more impervious to stain they will be.

In learning about staining our teeth, it's interesting to note that anything that will stain a white t-shirt will stain our teeth. Drinking a glass of water after eating staining foods helps to wash the matter away from our enamel in the same way that saliva helps.

Hard Cheese Helps Clean Teeth

Cheddar and other hard cheeses actually have a cleansing action and helps to remove food particles from teeth by their crumbling texture. So the process of eating the cheese actually helps in some small way to clean the teeth.

According to a study by the Academy of General Dentistry, it takes only about 1/3 of a slice of cheese to elevate pH for 30 minutes after eating and this creates a "mouth-saving effect" of neutralizing the acidic pH that would damage enamel. The other essential effect that is created by eating cheese is something called "sialogogue," which refers to the salivation creating properties of the cheese. The impact of increased salivation helps render the acidity in the many foods listed above powerless. The study found that cheese actually protects your teeth from acid erosion.

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