Diet & Snacks For The Development Of Healthy Teeth
Healthy meals and well planned snacks are important to a child’s growth and development. Frequent snacking on high fat or sugar containing foods reduces a child’s appreciate for the more nourishing foods needed for proper development and will also contribute towards tooth decay. Start on the right track early by encouraging your child to eat a wide variety of foods in the recommended amounts from the Food Pyramid.
The Food Pyramid
The Food Pyramid is a colourful guide to the foods recommended as part of a healthy eating plan. Most of your child’s foods should come from the bottom shelves of the pyramid with smaller amounts coming from the food groups higher up the pyramid. Foods at the very top of the pyramid should be eaten sparingly. Because of the variety of foods on each shelf of the pyramid, it is easy to choose foods your child will enjoy from each shelf.
Snack Foods
For snacks offer children fruit, raw vegetables, unsweetened breakfast cereals, bread, mild, cheese and yogurt, unsweetened juices and drinks. Be careful to ensure that the snack is suitable for the age of the child and does not pose a risk of choking for younger children.
Try to limit to mealtimes, children’s intake of confectionery especially chewy or sticky sweets, biscuits, cakes and pastries, high fat snack foods (e.g. crisps), sugar coated breakfast cereals and fizzy drinks. Remember, foods containing sugar when eaten at mealtimes (with other foods) have a less damaging effect on your child’s teeth than when they are eaten alone.
Snacking Tips
If children drink or eat snacks containing sugar, limit the number of times they take them throughout the day.
•Food or drinks containing sugar (limit intake to mealtimes) and juices should be taken quickly and not over a long period.
•Fruit and vegetables are ideal ‘tooth friendly’ snacks and can be given instead of sweets and confectionery.
•Milk, cheese and yogurt are high in calcium, a mineral needed for healthy teeth. They are ‘tooth friendly’ and make good snacks.
•Read food labels. The nutrition label will tell you how much sugar a food contains. If there is no nutrition label then read the ingredients label. Don’t just look for sugar, often sugar can be called sucrose, glucose, maltose, dextrose, invert sugar syrup or corn syrup. Try to choose infant foods with the least sugar content and don’t add sugar to home-made baby food.
•Carbonated or fizzy drinks put the teeth at risk of enamel erosion.
Help your child to develop healthy eating habits and you will not only be helping to protect their teeth, but their general health. The habits they begin now, will help them in later life!
In our next newsletter, we will look at Cleaning Children’s Teeth and how to teach your child good dental hygiene and cleaning techniques.
The Team At Help Me 2 Parent