Everyone knows that sugar is bad for teeth. It causes tooth decay and often sugary drinks contain acids which can corrode the delicate tooth enamel. There are certain fizzy drinks that are well known culprits.

No one would be surprised to hear than a can of coke contains a lot of sugar and is therefore bad for your teeth, but there are some ‘healthier’ drinks that have a surprisingly high sugar content.

During 2016, the Government floated the suggestion of imposing a sugar tax on soft drinks, prompting the evaluation of exactly how much sugar was found in many of the nation’s favourite drinks. To make the findings easily digestible, the amount of sugar was then converted into ‘teaspoon equivalents’.

And the ‘winner’ is…..

The table below shows the rank order of the 10 worst offending soft drinks consumed in the UK, and how many grams of sugar are found within each.

Old Jamaica Ginger Beer Extra Fiery (15.7 grams per 100ml)

Rockstar Punched Guava (15.6)

Old Jamaica Ginger Beer (15.2)

Mountain Dew (13.0)

Coke Cherry (11.2)

Pepsi Cola (11.0)

Red Bull (11.0)

Monster Origin Energy Drink (11.0)

7 Up (11.0)

Coca Cola (10.6)

The drink containing the highest amount of sugar per 100ml is Old Jamaican Ginger Beer, and at just under 16 grams of sugar per 100ml this equates to almost four teaspoons of sugar. When you bear in mind that many fizzy drinks are consumed in 330ml cans, you can quickly see that this equates to a startling amount of sugar. Coca Cola gets a bad press for containing a lot of sugar, and just enters the top 10 with 10.6 grams per 100ml.

Brush away excess sugar

Here at CK Dental practice in Bristol, we recommend that brushing your teeth at least twice a day is a good starting point to removing a build up of sugar in between your teeth, but if you’re a fan of any of the types of drinks listed above then it might be sensible to begin brushing between meals too.

Our European cousins take this approach, with Italians in particular very stringent with their oral hygiene and regularly found brushing their teeth between meals, but this is something that is yet to really
catch on here in the UK. It’s never too late to start, so if you’re keen to keep your teeth healthy yet are partial to sugary drinks, then this could be a good contender for a 2017 New Year’s resolution…..