Halloween's WORST Offenders

The countdown is on.  Only 6 more days until Halloween, which means 6 more days for you to get treats for the neighbourhood kids.

If you decide to give out candy-alternatives, check out our last blog post for non-food items you can give out - here.

If you prefer to give out snacks, here are some of the worst ones, dentally - and why:

Potato chips

While not sweet-tasting, potatoes are carbohydrates (or simple sugars, if you will).  The thing about potato chips are: once they're chewed, they become sticky and pretty much glue themselves onto your teeth.  Glue + sugar on your teeth = cavity waiting to happen.

Popcorn

Yup, this one isn't sugary either, but who agrees that it's the worst when a kernel gets lodged into your pearly whites?  It's uncomfortable for sure, but again, we have that concern about bacteria collecting in that area and causing trouble for your teeth.

Taffy & Caramel & Gummies

Speaking of sugar being stuck on your teeth, do we even need to elaborate on taffy and caramel.  Even if it's a caramel apple (which *sounds* like it could be half "healthy"), that stuff is one of the stickiest of candy and therefore, one of the worst offenders.

Sour Candy

LOL, we're just going through ALL the flavours today, aren't we?  "What could possibly be wrong with sour candy?", you ask?

We've all seen those sensitive-teeth commercials, haven't we?  The ones where acids from fruit destroy the enamel coating on our teeth?  Well, we hate to break it to you, but the acid put into candy has a similar effect.  In addition to the tartness, candy companies usually have to balance out the extreme sour with - you guessed it - a certain amount of sugar to make it more palatable.

We just looked up the sugar content in a popular sour candy and in a 16 g serving, 8 g of it is sugar - that's literally half sugar!