If you’re like many other Australians, you are looking forward to lots of sweet treats on Easter weekend, having a big Easter brunch, visiting with friends and relatives for meals, or setting up an Easter egg hunt for your children.
Easter is a time for relaxing with family and friends, but it can harm your teeth (and waistline!).
There’s nothing wrong with celebrating Easter with chocolate and candies, but it’s important to remember to take care of your oral health at the same time.
It’s not too big a job if you keep a few simple things in mind—and well worth it in the long run.
What Does Candy Do to Your Teeth
When eating foods and snacks with high sugar content, bacteria in your mouth feed on the sugar and excrete an acid as a result. This acidic substance contributes to a buildup of plaque, gum diseases, and cavities. The longer your teeth are exposed to sugar, the more damage is done.
What is the link between Easter and Sugar?
Easter treats overflow with sugar. Health experts recommend the average Australian woman should have 25 grams of sugar, while men should have 35 grams, and no one should exceed 50 grams, in any case.
But take a look at what Easter candies offer:
- Cadbury Crème Eggs. 20 grams of sugar. Six teaspoons of sugar is too much for a tiny piece of chocolate treat. This much sugar in a single serving is one of the main reasons of tooth decay among children especially during Easter.
- One serving of a chocolate covered Peep (28-grams) contains 14 grams of sugar. If you eat one package of small yellow peeps you take in a whopping 34 grams of sugar – basically the entire recommended sugar for an adult man in a day!
- Lindt Chocolate Bunny. These have an alarming 50 grams of sugar. Chocolate may be nutritious but if eaten excessively, it would lead to serious health and dental issues to you and your children. Eating too much chocolates causes tooth decay, obesity, and even diabetes.
Snack on a few of these and your sugar intake can mount quickly. One chocolate Peep, a Cadbury Crème Egg, and a chocolate bunny and you’re already at 84 grams of sugar. Add a fistful of jellybeans, and you reach 100 grams.
And if your child has an Easter basket, they can do this to themselves day after day, until the basket is empty.
To protect you from this kind of sugar attack, Mayfield Dental Care offers six pieces of advice.
Our Easter dental tips!
- Include non-edible gifts in your Easter Basket. Balance candy with other gifts. At Mayfield Dental Care, we would love to see completely sugar