Perfect smile: support healthy teeth with calcium.

What role, if any, does diet play in dental health? If you drank plenty of milk as a child and continue to brush, floss and see your dentist regularly, isn't that enough?

Evidently not. While scientific research into the effect of diet on the condition of your teeth has been scarce, the role of dietary calcium--for adults as well as children--is increasingly taken for granted by health care practitioners who see real live patients. Now, a new study, conducted by the University of Iowa and published in the September 2003 issue of Pediatrics, underscores calcium's importance, confirming what most dentists have suspected for years.

What you eat affects your dental health, and getting enough dietary calcium, as a child and as an adult, is as important in many ways as limiting your intake of sugar.

It's high time people got the message. Despite easy access to unprecedented volumes of information, not to mention motorized toothbrushes, kid-friendly toothpastes and fluoridated water, children continue to develop cavities, in part because of what they eat--of, more precisely--what they drink. The researchers found that the children who had the most cavities at the end of the 5-year study were also those who reported drinking more soft drinks and powdered beverages such as Kool-Aid, most of which are loaded with sugar.

But even the youngsters who drank mostly fruit juices continued to develop more cavities than researchers would have guessed.

That's probably because most juices are sugar-heavy too. "If you talk to any pediatric dentist who sees kids who are slugging down juice 24/7, [those kids are] going to have rotten teeth," says lead researcher Teresa A. Marshall, PhD, RD, of the University of Iowa's College of Dentistry.

When sugar--from soft drinks, fruit juices or any other source--hits the tooth's surface, its interaction with bacteria in the mouth produces an acid that erodes the enamel. The stronger the enamel, the more resistant it is to tooth decay, which is why it is important for children to drink plenty of milk, the source of calcium that comes most readily to mind. Other sources include green leafy vegetables, rice, beans, almonds and dietary supplements.