Good oral health is essential for the overall benefit of your physical and emotional well-being. To help provide all the important nutrients to maintain a healthy state, diet plays a vital role. Good nutrition is an important prerequisite for proper growth and development, especially in children and growing adults. This holds good even for achieving healthy teeth and gums.
Diet counseling by the dentist in Dacula, GA, and their team educates patients to take care of their child’s nutritional needs to help them achieve good oral and physical health.
A well-balanced diet paves the way for healthy teeth
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children require a balanced dose of all the essential nutrients needed for healthy growth and development. Your teeth and the supporting structures are important, too, since your oral cavity acts as a gateway to other systems in your body. A good and well-balanced diet must contain the right amounts of proteins, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins, and fats.
You must pay special attention to the foods they eat, especially the ones they snack on to regulate the amount of sugar present in them. Increased sugar intake can be detrimental to their oral health since it paves the way for increased bacterial colonization and plaque accumulation in the future.
- Foods to eat
Include the following foods in your child’s diet to reap maximum benefits:
- Proteins like eggs and chickpeas
- Lean meat like fish and chicken
- Nuts like almonds and walnuts
- Fruits like berries, melons and pears
- Vegetables like spinach, broccoli, cucumber and celery
- Cheese and low-fat dairy products like butter and paneer
- Calcium sources like milk and curd
- Xylitol-sweetened gum
- Fluoridated water
- Foods to avoid
Though an essential part of your child’s growth, certain foods can be harmful when consumed regularly. Lessen the risk of dental caries and decay by limiting your child’s intake of certain foods or avoiding them altogether. These include:
- Sticky, chewy foods like caramel, lollipops, and candies
- Desserts like ice cream
- Sugar-sweetened drinks like sodas, sports drinks, sweetened fruit juice, and chocolate milk
Make sure to brush your child’s teeth after eating sticky and sugary snacks. Also, limit snacking in between meals since it does not provide sufficient time for your mouth to produce saliva to flush out the bacteria and plaque.
Closure
A good and healthy diet loaded with nutrients is fundamental to your child’s growth and development. Diet, along with good oral hygiene practices like brushing, flossing, regular dental visits, and professional cleaning, can give you healthy teeth, body, and mind.
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