At Creative Smiles we often have patients say that they don’t eat sweets,biscuits or have fizzy drinks yet they have decay occurring. Sugar is a sly creature and turns up in the most unexpected places! So if you want to avoid eating excess amounts you need to be prepared to do some label reading.
A lot of food products disguise sugars under names that are not always familiar. Other foods are savoury and so very often it wouldn’t occur to you to check the label.
Food expects currently state that a high level of sugar means there is more than 15g of it per 100g of the product. Some foods in the UK have a traffic light system on their packaging which flag up these high levels, so look out for these red circles on the packaging. Not all manufacturers follow this system so it is worth checking the ingredients list. When looking at the ingredients list not only should you look for the word sugar you also need to look for ingredients ending in “ose” a term used as a suffix for sugars which include fructose, lactose, sucrose, glucose etc. Sugars can also be listed as carbohydrates. When reading labels remember that no added sugar doesn’t mean that the product is sugar free it simply means that no sugar has been added to it.
To help reduce decay cut down on the amount of sugary foods and drinks you consume and try as best to limit them to meal times.