Tooth decay - beware dried fruit and fruit juice!

[Janh]

I always knew about raisins but not about things like dried banana!

Raisin consciousness

Or cheese, of course.

From gaba.com

picked DD up from mums tonight - complete with Kojak lolly
Guess who had cheese to munch on in the car on the way home.
Stop it mother!!

I was going to be the mother picking out sultanas from ds's sultana bran in the morning, until i read the last paragraph!

Just when I thought I was on to a good thing because dd eats raisins everyday!

oh for God's sake.

can we do nothing right?

Hard to prove it was the raisins wot done it when she wasn't using a fluoride toothpaste.

Diet drinks are banned for USA fighter pilots because of their side effects.

A holistic view is necessary, or else we rob Peter to pay Paul healthwise.

Agree with bobbybob - tooth decay is definitely not good but in the end no-one will die of rotten teeth (although I know the bacteria in teeth can contribute to heart disease), whereas a poor diet can lead to very serious health problems so its definitely not worth overdoing the dental advice at the expense of general health. Raisins make up a huge part of my dd's fruit intake so not going to stop that, just make sure I brush her teeth well.

wobbly can I suggest you get her to eat her raisins all in one sitting, say at the end of a meal, ideally followed by a lump of cheese? If she eats raisins a few here and a few there all day long there is real risk her teeth will rot.
Same goes for juice. It is the drip drip effect all day long that really does the damage.

maybe we should just not feed our kids - it is such a minefield .

I was struck by the suggestion that you should give them breadsticks and crackers as snacks. Have you seen how much salt there is in those ?

I am coming to the conclusion that most food we have available today has been messed about with so much it is likely to have some health risk - so given that a little of everything is my approach. Our bodies were not designed to deal with modern processed (or even modern farm produced) food - I wonder how long before government and producers realise that an reduce all processing to a minimum?

Agreed, throck....
I often give mine raisins & chunks of cheese together.. and it wasn't even a deliberate anti-tooth decay strategy!

but zebra, which do they eat first? I do that (cheese chunks and raisins together in a pot) but they eat the cheese first!

raisins and dried apricots are excellent sources of iron, especially useful for veggie kids.

actually, mine don't like raisins very much, so they don't have them that often (with or without cheese)

Dentist is happy with their teeth, anyway.

I think it makes sense to place this in context of total dietary sugar intake , some kids eat amazing amounts of the stuff....

throckenholt - Organix do a great range of breadsticks with no added salt or sugar, ds loves them.

I'm afraid that my view of "healthy" food for ds is slightly different to most peoples

Chocolate - fantastic, can eat without a reaction= healthy.
Banana - a small one could kill ds = unhealthy.

Funnily enough I'm not that worried about his teeth.

thanks for the toothpaste tips further down the thread!

listen to jasper - she is a dentist.

Yep, dd does eat her raisins all at once (in the space of about a minute!!) and usually has a (no salt) ricecake afterwards, will start giving her cheese afterwards. She has very weak juice if she has juice (about 1:7 conc, but usually has water instead), and only has it at one sitting, not because I'm watching for her teeth but she's given up sippy cups and will only drink from a glass or mug so its the easiest way!!

wobbly doesn't sound like you have much to worry about on the raisin front! SO long as she is not scoffing a pile every half hour