Who doesn’t like a little sour candy once in a while?
We know one person who absolutely hates and loves all types of sour candies: your local dentist. They love the candy because candy of all sorts eventually leads to cavities and more patients. They hate the sour candies because of what they do to tooth enamel, simply as a matter of the high levels of acidity required to give you that mouth-puckering sour taste.
Web Watch has a friend who regularly jokes that he has a lack of adequate tooth enamel because of something his mother did (or didn’t do) while he was growing in the womb. While there might be some truth to that, he should also take into account the types of candy that he chooses to eat.
That’s because, according to Dr John Ruby from the University of Alabama Birmingham School of Dentistry, there are some sour candies that contain so much acidity, that eating them is almost the same as drinking battery acid.
And it all has to do with those aforementioned acidity levels.
Water has an acidity level (also called pH) of 7.0. That’s good. Battery acid has an acidity level of 1.0. That’s bad.
Tooth enamel loss comes in around a 4.0 on that logarithmic scale.
The question for today is WHAT SOUR CANDIES CAN LEAD TO LOSS OF TOOTH ENAMEL?
The answer? Lots of them.
- Spree, Sweetarts, Sour Gummi Bears are your least acidic of the bunch, with a PH rating of 3.0. Remember, the lower the number, the worse things get.
- Warheads Sour Spray was the worst of those studied – 1.6 on the scale. Parents would be well advised not to provide this candy to their kids, if only to protect that precious tooth enamel
Other Ph levels on the list were:
- Sour Punch Straws – 2.5
- Skittles – 2.5
- Sour Skittles – 2.2
- Laffy Taffy – 2.5
- Starburst – 2.4
- Wonka Nerds (Grape) – 2.0
- Altoids Mango Sours – 1.9
- Fun Dip powder – 1.8