Is chocolate bad for your teeth?

Chocolate has a bad reputation with dentists, and it is only partly deserved.

It is not harmless. But it is nowhere near the worst thing in an average Australian pantry, and several things people happily give their children are considerably worse. The reason comes down to a single idea that is more useful than any list of good and bad foods.

The thing that actually matters is timing

Sugar does not damage teeth directly. Bacteria eat it and produce acid, and the acid dissolves enamel.

That acid attack takes a while to settle down afterwards, as saliva washes it away and puts minerals back. So the important question is not how much sugar you ate. It is how many separate times your teeth were put under attack, and how long each one lasted.

One chocolate bar eaten in one sitting is a single attack. The same bar picked at across an afternoon is many, with no recovery in between. Same sugar. Very different outcome.

Once you understand that, most of the confusing advice about food and teeth sorts itself out.

Why chocolate does comparatively well

Chocolate melts at body temperature and clears the mouth relatively quickly. It does not weld itself into the grooves of your back teeth.

Compare that with the things it usually gets replaced by:

• Dried fruit. Concentrated sugar in a sticky form that packs into the grooves and stays there. Widely regarded as a healthy snack, and one of the worst options for teeth.
• Muesli and fruit bars. Same problem, often with added syrups.
• Boiled sweets and toffee. Either stuck to the teeth or held in the mouth for a long time. Both bad for the same reason.
• Soft drinks, sports drinks and juice, sipped slowly. The worst of the lot, because they are usually acidic in their own right on top of the sugar, and sipping keeps the attack running for as long as the bottle lasts.

None of this makes chocolate a health food. It means the ranking most people carry around in their heads is wrong.

Dark chocolate, honestly

You will read that compounds in cocoa protect enamel, and that dark chocolate actively fights decay.

We would not lean on that. Those findings come mostly from laboratory work, and there is a long gap between something behaving well in a dish and it preventing cavities in a person eating an actual chocolate bar.

Here is the part that is solid, and it is enough on its own: darker chocolate has less sugar in it. Milk chocolate is mostly sugar and milk solids with a modest amount of cocoa. White chocolate contains no cocoa solids at all and is essentially sugar and fat.

So choose dark if you like it, because it has less sugar. Not because it is medicine.

Two caveats worth keeping. Dark chocolate still stains, along with coffee, tea and red wine. And it is still sugar, so the timing rule applies to it exactly as much as to anything else.

What to do in practice

Keep sweet things to mealtimes. Your mouth already produces more saliva with a meal, so the acid is buffered better, and you get one attack instead of five.

Follow with water. A plain rinse does a surprising amount of work.

Do not graze. This is the whole article in three words. An hour of nibbling is much worse than the same amount eaten in five minutes.

Do not brush immediately after anything acidic. Juice, wine, soft drink and citrus temporarily soften enamel, and brushing it in that state scrubs some of it away. Rinse with water at the time and brush an hour later. Chocolate is not strongly acidic, so this matters less there, but the habit is a good one.

Cheese is genuinely useful. Finishing on cheese or plain yoghurt prompts saliva and helps bring the mouth back towards neutral. Nuts and crunchy vegetables are good for the same reason.

For children

The realistic goal is not a childhood without sugar. It is a childhood where sugar arrives at predictable moments rather than continuously.

Chocolate after dinner, then teeth brushed before bed, is a completely reasonable arrangement. A snack cupboard raided steadily from four o'clock onwards is the thing that produces cavities, even if everything in it looks healthier than chocolate.

The bottom line

Chocolate is a treat and it behaves like one. It is not the villain, and several things marketed as healthy alternatives are worse for teeth than the thing they replace.

Eat it with a meal, drink water afterwards, brush twice a day, and have somebody look properly twice a year.

A full check-up and clean is a fixed $249, which covers the exam, the scale and clean, fluoride and any bitewing x-rays you need, with your health fund claimed on the spot.

Read more: Everything you need to know about cavities