Have you ever heard the saying “You are what you eat”?  Well it is true.  Your body (and teeth) needs healthy foods to help grow big, strong and healthy.  Eating junk food will not help your body stay strong and healthy.  But if you eat healthy foods, this allows your body to grow by getting the right vitamins and minerals in your diet.  

• An easy way to track the foods you are eating is to use the website Choose My Plate.   This  website is very helpful because it explains  the importance of eating foods from the five (5) different food groups:

  • • Fruits

    • Vegetables

    • Grains

    • Dairy

    • Protein

• Notice that they don’t list any thing about snacking on junk food.  If you are going to snack you want to try to have an apple, banana, carrots, celery, nuts, etc.  We want to try to limit the amount of sugar that we are eating.  

Here is another great link that discusses about food to help your teeth: https://www.mouthhealthy.org/en/nutrition/food-tips.  

This link discusses the Dietary Guidelines for Americans: https://health.gov/our-work/food-nutrition/2015-2020-dietary-guidelines/guidelines

Start by looking at the nutrition label to know how many grams of sugar are in a product you are eating.  Also, notice how the ingredients in the iced tea below also has the word ACID in the ingredients (it has ascorbic acid and citric acid).  Look at the label of what you are drinking and then figure out how many teaspoons of sugar are in the drink.  The equation to figure that out is: 4 grams = 1 teaspoon