According to Nutrition Research, drinking white wine can be seriously damaging to your teeth, but…wait for it…they recommend you eat cheese, yipeeeeee!
An article on the BBC website goes into more detail, but in short it is due to the PH levels of the drink, rather than the colour or the alcohol content. According to Johannes Gutenberg University team, if you want to do some serious dental damage, hit the Riesling wines and other similar whites, mix them with fruit, then brush your teeth immediately after.
Red wines like Rioja are the least offensive, and if you add food to the cocktail, the saliva produced when eating helps neutralise the acid, and consequently lessen the damage. The BBC article quotes Professor Damien Walmsley of the British Dental Association “If you’re going to have a glass of wine do so with your meal and leave a break of at least 30 minutes afterwards before you brush your teeth and go to bed.”
Most importantly though, according to the research team; “The tradition of enjoying different cheeses for dessert, or in combination with drinking wine, might have a beneficial effect on preventing dental erosion since cheeses contain calcium in a high concentration.”
So the moral of the story is to eat lots of cheese and avoid fruit…kind of…?
I can at least try to convince myself that in order to drink more wine, I need to eat more cheese, but given the amount I already consume, I am sure I will be causing some other damage to my body – humn, maybe the anti-oxidants in red wine will help?
Now this is really interesting. I didn’t know wine could cause damage to teeth. Thank you for sharing this.I’d love to guide our readers to your site if you won’t mind.Just add your choice of foodista widget to this post and it’s all set, Thanks!
Fantastic, thanks for your comments, I have added the widget
Thanks for adding the widget Sophie.
really enjoyed going through your blog, looking forward to more wonderful posts here! Cheers!
Dentists have been trying to inform people about the damaging effects of acidic drinks for some time. Some dentists say that acidic drinks cause more damage to teeth than candy or sugar.
People usually associate acidic drinks with soft drinks or citrus juices and forget that wine is acidic, too.