The ADA, American Dental Association approves of chewing gum because chewing increases the saliva flow in your mouth. Chewing after eating helps neutralize and wash away acids that are produced when food is broken down by the bacteria in the plaque on your teeth.
If this acid is not removed from the teeth, it can start to break down the tooth enamel which leads to the beginning of tooth decay. Saliva flow helps to strengthen the tooth enamel. Clinical studies have shown that chewing sugarless gum for twenty minutes following meals can help decrease tooth decay. Even in children, chewing sugarless gum with xylitol is recommended.
JADA, Journal of the American Dental Association, describes a study by the Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. When compared with sugar-sweetened gum, sorbitol-sweetened gum had low carcinogenicity when it was chewed no more than three times per day. Xylitol-sweetened gum was noncariogenic in all of the protocols tested.
The FDA, U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Sorbitol in 1978. Xylitol is a sweetener found in plants that is used a a substitute for sugar. It is considered a nutritive sweetener because, like sugar, it contains calories.
According the NCBI, National Center for Biotechnology Information, "xylitol-containing gum forms were statistically superior to the sorbitol gum in retarding plaque regrowth" and "research evidence supports using polyol-containing chewing gum as part of normal oral hygiene to prevent dental caries."
Below are some brands of sugarless gum you may have tried.
Trident Splash - sweetened with Sorbitol
Trident Xtra Care - sweetened with Xylitol
Trident White - sweetened with Sorbitol
Spry - sweetened with Xylitol
Wrigley's Extra Desert Delights - sweetened with Sorbitol
Wrigley's Eclipse - sweetened with Xylitol
Wrigley's Orbit - sweetened with Sorbitol
Dentyne Fire - sweetened with Sorbitol
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I went to a dental convention a year ago and the Spry distributor was there. They bragged how good their gum was because it was sweetened with a natural ingredient called Xylitol. I guess that is good because it is a natural sugar that helps prevent cavities. I checked out the gum that they had and it was not very good. The flavor was not tasty and the gum lost it's flavor in less than a minute. I even put a couple of pieces in my mouth, hoping to have the flavor a little longer. Nope, the flavor did not last.
ReplyDeleteI tried Trident Tropical Twist made with xylitol and the flavor lasted about a 1/2 hour. That's as long as I can chew gum anyway, so that was fine. I was thinking by your post that it was the xylitol that didn't hold the flavor, but that wasn't the case with Trident.
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