Our goal is to provide you with a beautiful smile. This can only be accomplished if the braces stay attached to your teeth. We do not want to interfere with your nutritional intake, but we do ask that you watch the types of foods you eat. Some types of foods can break your bands or brackets, bend your wires, and break the cement under your bands or brackets. All these things prolong treatment time.
A careful patient can eat a nutritionally balanced diet and do no harm to his/her braces. We hope that you will strive to be this type of patient. The foods listed below are the ones that we have found to be the most common causes of loose bands, brackets, and broken appliances.
Hard Foods:
- Ice (no crunching, please)
- Hard Edges of Pizza
- Crisp French Fries
- Hard Corn Chips (Doritos®)
- Peanuts (all nuts)
- Popcorn (hard kernels)
- Life Savers®
- Peppermint Sticks
- Carrots & Apples (may be eaten if cut into small enough pieces)
- Corn on the Cob (may be eaten if sliced off the cob)
- Ribs (may be eaten if meat is sliced off the bone)
Sticky & Chewy Foods:
- Caramels
- Taffy
- Gum (not even Freedent®)
- Now and Later® Candy
- Marathon® Bars
- Milky Way® Bars
- Slo Poke® Suckers
- Sugar Daddy® Candy
Sweet Foods:
Although they may not cause damage to your appliances, care should be taken to brush your teeth immediately after eating very sweet foods. If you cannot brush, at least rinse your mouth out with water.
- Cake
- Pie
- Candy
- Ice Cream
- Cookies
- Sweet Drinks (soda, lemonade)
Be a good brace watcher. Please notify our office if appliances become loose or broken so we might minimize prolonged treatment time. Brushing is important at all times but especially now that you have braces. Work hard to keep your braces just as shiny as the day they were placed. Then, when your treatment is complete, and your braces are removed, you will be proud to smile — because a smile is forever!
