Everybody wants to sport that brilliant white smile full of confidence. People who care for their dental hygiene have far healthier teeth than those who don’t. Of course, that doesn’t mean their pearly whites will stay that way forever. Despite regular brushing and flossing, stained teeth is a problem that plagues many people because of the food they eat.
Sure, scheduling a session with a Lehigh Valley teeth whitening professional can hit the reset button. However, limiting or eliminating beverages and food that stain your teeth can go a long way in reducing those stains. We’ll discuss some of the top foods that stain your teeth and how you can effectively restore your teeth to their former glory.
Why Do Some Foods Cause Stains?
Some foods and beverages contain compounds like tannins and chromogens that give them their strong color. The outer layer of your teeth, called enamel, protects them.
However, the compounds giving food and beverages their color can seep through pores in the enamel and attach to your teeth. Plenty of foods have an acidic nature that wears down the enamel, increasing the odds of your teeth becoming stained.
What are the Top 10 Foods That Stain Your Teeth?
As a general principle, you should consider that anything that stains your clothes is something that can also stain your teeth. While there are plenty of foods and beverages that do that, we’ll list the most common culprits:
1. Coffee and Tea
These caffeinated beverages might be great for a morning pick-me-up, but they contain tannins that cause staining.
2. Red Wine
Like caffeinated drinks, red wine is rich in tannins. It also contains acids and natural dyes that can stain teeth.
3. Fruit Juices
Fruit juices have a lot of sugar that can feed bacteria in your mouth, leading to stained teeth and worse. Juices with darker colors also have strong pigments that can stick to the enamel, leading to staining.
4. Citric Foods
Oranges, lemons, grapefruit, and other citrus-based foods have plenty of nutrients. However, the citric acid they contain can wear away the enamel, leaving the lower layer of teeth exposed to staining.
5. Sports Drinks
Sports drinks contain plenty of compounds known for eroding enamel. When you consume these regularly, it leaves your teeth vulnerable to staining.
6. Pomegranates
While rich in antioxidants, pomegranates are also rich in dark pigments which can stain your teeth.
7. Soy Sauce
Soy sauce has a lot of dark pigments which can accumulate on the enamel and stain teeth.
8. Tomato Sauce and Ketchup
Tomato sauce, ketchup, and other items containing tomatoes have acids that can lead to erosion in the enamel, leaving teeth exposed to staining.
9. Curry
As great as curry tastes because of all the sauces, those same sauces have pigments that can seep into the enamel and stain your teeth.
10. Sweets and Candy
The high sugar content in sweets and candies makes your mouth a bacteria’s heaven. As the candy sticks to your teeth, the bacteria in your mouth starts feeding on it, leading to staining and tooth decay.
How to Stop Staining Your Teeth
You can minimize staining by brushing and flossing your teeth regularly, but it is impossible to stop it entirely. Taking good care of dental hygiene can slow staining considerably, but there will come a time when the stains will get too bad to ignore. At that point, scheduling an appointment with a Bethlehem teeth whitening professional is the only way to restore your pearly whites. This is where we can help.
At New Wave Accelerated Teeth Whitening in Bethlehem, PA, a single 60-minute session can remove the stains. Since we use natural gels made with plant-based hydrogen peroxide that are made right here in the US, you can count on safe, effective, and reliable results at a fraction of the cost of visiting a cosmetic dentist.
With countless customer reviews backing our claim, you can rest assured that your teeth can
become bright again. Schedule an appointment with us today to see the results yourself!
Jonathan Erik, Owner
New Wave Accelerated Teeth Whitening
Certified Teeth Whitening Technician
Bethlehem, PA
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