Avoid These Foods When Wearing Dentures
When suffering from missing, broken, or damaged teeth you can be severely limited in the foods you can eat comfortably. It can also seriously affect your physical health. If you’re not able to eat a wide variety of foods, you’re likely starving your body of critical nutrients that it needs to function at its best.
So when you get dentures and find that the functionality of your mouth has been restored, it can feel like your options are endless. And while dentures are strong and designed to withstand the heavy use associated with chewing, there are some types of foods you might want to avoid.
Foods to Avoid When Wearing Dentures
Sticky Foods: Sticky foods like gum, taffy, and sticky candy can easily stick to your dentures and cause them to dislodge. To prevent this potentially embarrassing situation, avoid sticky foods.
Peanut Butter: Peanut butter is sticky, but not sticky enough to dislodge your dentures. Still, it can stick to your teeth or the roof of your mouth, and removing it with your tongue is more complicated with dentures than it is with natural teeth.
Nuts and Seeds: Nuts are not only hard to bite down on, but they break into small, hard pieces that can become lodged beneath your dentures. This can cause your dentures to loosen, and can also irritate your gums.
Crunchy Produce: Raw, crunchy produce might not damage your dentures, but it could dislodge them. The amount of force you need to produce in order to chew these foods properly can also cause sore spots on your gums. If you eat crunchy produce (like an apple), cut it into smaller pieces first.
Coffee or Tea: Just like your natural teeth, dentures can stain. While drinking these beverages won’t necessarily damage them, you want to keep your false teeth in the best shape possible – and that includes avoiding foods that can alter their color and make them age faster than normal.
How to Know What Foods You Can Eat with Dentures
The list of foods you should avoid while wearing dentures may seem daunting, but there are still plenty of foods that will be allowed back on your plate after you get them installed. The variety of foods will also be affected based upon the type of dentures you get. Implant dentures, which are a more permanent denture solution, can handle more crunchy and hard textures than other solutions like flexible partial dentures.
Speak with your denturist to get their specific recommendations on foods to avoid based on your particular type of dentures. Regardless of their restrictions, you can be assured that your culinary options will be much more varied after you get dentures than they were before them.
