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Sugar, acid and teeth (2009)

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Re: Sugar, acid and teeth (2009)

#81

Post by papsosouid »

beagle3 wrote: post #38
mtts wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Juice is for most intents and purposes no healthier dan soda. It's mostly sugar and acid. The fact that said sugar and acid used to reside in a piece of fruit makes no difference at all. If you want the health benefits of fruit, eat a piece of fruit.

I love the conviction with which you say that. So, there is no difference between compounds that we've evolved to consume over millions of years, and ones which were designed in the last 30 to be as addictive and as cheap to make as possible? While I do not claim that there is evidence of difference (I cannot provide any), it is unfounded to claim that there is none, whether based on some (inherently) limited study o…

Your entire post is nothing but fallacies. You don't evolve to do anything. And you didn't evolve in the presence of orange juice, oranges didn't exist. And it doesn't matter, because that is just the naturalistic fallacy. Something being "natural" doesn't make it good, and something being "artificial" doesn't make it bad. We did not evolve with modern tooth cleaning equipment or flouride treatments either, but those are still beneficial to our teeth.

There is absolutely no evidence to support the notion that pop is any worse for you than a fruit juice of similar acidity and caloric content.

Re: Sugar, acid and teeth (2009)

#82

Post by peterwwillis »

steve8918 wrote: post #29
peterwwillis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides being bad for your teeth it's a nightmare on your body. That insulin dump from the onslaught of sugar will make you much more likely to develop diabetes, and some studies have shown a long-term metabolic effect where your body prefers sugars for energy instead of fats. That and the empty calories will lop-side your diet and make it harder to lose weight or gain muscle. There are lots of ways you can drink som…

I 100% agree. Actually I have done almost exactly that, switched to tea, or ice tea. I'm not completely off the sugary drinks, but I'll drink things like Honest Tea with a lot less sugar than Coke, or just plain Tea. The thing I'm actually most worried about is pancreatic cancer. I'm not even sure if there's a link between that and soft drinks, but I read one study where having 2-3 soft drinks a week doubled your ris…

Screw the cancer. Stop drinking soda because it's just not tasty.

There's a whole world of drinks not found in your local vending machine that are crazy tasty and healthy for you. Fruit/vegetable-infused water, iced teas and blends, juice seltzer, kombucha, iced coffee, and about a billion delicious latin juice drinks with fruit that only people who speak spanish know about (my fav's probably Guanabana, though watered down a bit).

Re: Sugar, acid and teeth (2009)

#83

Post by humdumb »

Bacteria vs. Human body^1.

1. Specifically, teeth and saliva, but you must always consider the whole organism.

Drink soda pop --> Advantage, Bacteria.

Don't drink soda pop. --> What do you think?

Bacteria need acidic conditions and they are happy to have plenty of sugar. Preserving your teeth means giving your body the best possible chance against bacteria, slowing the process of decay as much as you can. But in the end, on every front, bacteria will always win. It's just a matter of time. If they don't consume you while you're alive, they will after you're dead.

With respect to tooth decay, drinking soft drinks surely helps bacteria, not the human body. But then, maybe people derive other benefits from drinking these concoctions. (Jolt?) Maybe preserving their teeth is not their number one priority?

Factoid: George Washington had wooden teeth?

Re: Sugar, acid and teeth (2009)

#84

Post by tsotha »

nathanb wrote: post #71
martey wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/tooth.asp suggests that submerging teeth in any acidic substance (e.g. orange juice) will soften and eventually dissolve them. Since this does not adequately replicate conditions in the mouth, it would not be useful to determine how such substances affect enamel.

I don't see how "not adequately replicating mouth conditions" leads to "would not be useful to determine effect on enamel". Yes, there will be significant differences between drinking Coke and soaking a tooth in Coke overnight. But that doesn't mean it won't provide a useful basis for comparison! Possibly even more useful than the arbitrary formula the author and dentist in the article came up with.

>But that doesn't mean it won't provide a useful basis for comparison!

Why bother? There are plenty of people out there who've been drinking coke for decades. All you need to do is compare their dental health to people who don't.

Re: Sugar, acid and teeth (2009)

#85

Post by lyso »

deltaqueue wrote: post #28

I wish he would have provided more explanation behind the dentist's algorithm. Here's an actual study measuring enamel loss, which seems much more definitive: http://faculty.philau.edu/ashleyj/General%20Dentistry%20Arti... Perhaps the most important snippet: Regression analysis indicated no correlation between enamel dissolution and beverage pH (r = 0.477, p > 0.05); in addition, the enamel dissolution showed no diff…

p>0.05 does not mean that a correlation has been disproven, just that the authors are unable to reject the null hypothesis (potentially due to lack of statistical power).

Re: Sugar, acid and teeth (2009)

#86

Post by lyso »

Royal wrote: post #25
cmatteri wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their function 10^(5.5-pH) * (mg/cl sugar + 1) does seem to imply that sugar and acidity have a synergistic effect, where the +1 in the sugar term is a hack to keep the result from being 0 if the sugar is 0. This doesn't make sense, as a modest increase in sugar, say from 0 to 1 would double the result regardless of the pH.

Their function also improves the results if the drink is more basic. A drink with a pH of 13 would have an amazing score on here. If you normalize the pH above 5.5 since it has "little to no effect" things on the lower end of the results are better, with milk being worse than water, and chocolate milk being worse than milk.

This shows how bogus it is - you can put lots of sugar in a basic drink and it would score well.

The key point for me is why is concentration of sugar in mg/cl? Why not mg/l, or g/l, or oz/gallon? Each one would give a different answer, and all are equally justifiable. (There is also the weird idea that a decrease in pH of 1, which is 10 times the concentration of H+, would therefore be 10 times as bad.)

Re: Sugar, acid and teeth (2009)

#87

Post by tallanvor »

peterwwillis wrote: post #80
kokey wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sweetness, try rotating between non-fructuse sweeteners. like saccharin, aspartame, stevia, etc. I also find that Coke Zero is a nice way to cut down on sugar but still keep the Coke taste, and it's a lot less acidic than Diet Coke. However I don't find vending machines stocking it as often as I'd like. That's assuming you are not buying into the aspartame myths. I've got diabetes in my family, so to me the risks…

Or, you know, stop drinking sweet things =) I know that's heretical in our society, but once you cut out sweet things your palate will change and you'll find things like unsweetened teas (cold Oolong is fucking amazing) and juice/water mixes are cheap, simple, tasty and healthy.

I love unsweetened iced tea and drink it as often as I can get it when I'm visiting home in the States, but it's so hard to get good iced tea in Europe, and since it's hard to keep enough ice on hand, it's a pain to try and make it here as well. So I end up drinking stuff like Pepsi Max (Can't get Diet Pepsi in Norway) or other diet sodas.

Re: Sugar, acid and teeth (2009)

#88

Post by beagle3 »

ericd wrote: post #79
beagle3 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xylitol's major positive effects on teeth health come from a different path: The bacteria responsible for cavities will try to eat it (cause it's close enough to sugar) but fail to digest it (cause it isn't), which will interfere with their ability to prosper and even kill them. (Unfortunately, that's also true for dogs: DO NOT feed your dog xylitol. It is toxic for them: two xylitol-swettened gums are potentially en…

That sounds like something I don't want to be eating either, if it's so toxic to both bacteria and fairly similar mammals. Have there been any long term xylitol studies? It seems likely that it would screw with the bacteria in one's gut.

I don't know specifically about bacteria in one's gut, and hadn't thought of that. However, studies of xylitol in both humans and rats all show overwhelming positive (and mostly unexpected) results related to immunity to diseases like respiratory infections and ear infections.

> something I don't want to be eating either, if it's so toxic to both bacteria and fairly similar mammals.

FYI: Chocolate is toxic to dogs as well; a 70% chocolate bar can kill a small dog. Are you going to abstain from chocolate and recommend everyone else does too?

Also: some humans are deathly allergic to nuts, and others to strawberries, and yet others to wheat gluten. These people are a lot closer to you genetically than a dog.

Enough research has been done on xylitol to deem it safe for human use -- much more so than e.g. sucralose (Splenda), acesulfame-K (SweetOne), Aspartame (NutraSweet) and High Fructose Corn Syrup. And while Xylitol does not form naturally, it is a sugar alochol like e.g. Sorbitol (also found in plums and apples), and shares the vast majority of its properties.

Really, do read the wikipedia entry.

Re: Sugar, acid and teeth (2009)

#89

Post by conroe64 »

peterwwillis wrote: post #18
steve8918 wrote: post #15

I have deep grooves in my teeth right above my gums on both sides of my mouth from drinking 3-6 cokes a day for 10+ years. For some reason, I have a habit of swishing the drinks on the bottom of my mouth and I think this is the reason why my teeth are so jacked up. In the past year, I've largely stopped drinking Coke, partly because of this, and because of the other health problems associated with drinking so much so…

Besides being bad for your teeth it's a nightmare on your body. That insulin dump from the onslaught of sugar will make you much more likely to develop diabetes, and some studies have shown a long-term metabolic effect where your body prefers sugars for energy instead of fats. That and the empty calories will lop-side your diet and make it harder to lose weight or gain muscle. There are lots of ways you can drink som…

Nightmare, onslaught, much more likely, lop-side, huge impact, truckloads of sugar... How can you use such scary descriptions without any giving any evidence backing up what you're saying?

Re: Sugar, acid and teeth (2009)

#90

Post by Detrus »

I never drink any sugary juices or candy. Eat lots of fruits and veggies, also bread, milk and nuts.

And I have terrible tooth decay.

Seems a bit silly to compare pHs of various junk foods. Drinking a better pH won't make much difference. The problem is a tad more complicated.

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