Foods you Can and Can’t Eat With Braces!

There will be a settling in period when you first have your braces fitted and you need to understand that things are going to be uncomfortable for a short time. You will need to get used to having this in your mouth and that certain things will have to change. You will find that your speech is a little strange and you will have to learn to eat again – well not quite learn from scratch but learn to accommodate the braces and understand what you can and can’t eat.

Clearly there will be certain things that you expect to be a problem, but there are also others that will have to be omitted or at least eaten carefully and in moderation. To begin with, there should just be soft food eaten and this will give you time to adjust and learn what it feels like to have food and braces in your mouth at the same time. You need to read up on foods to avoid with braces before you have them fitted and make sure you have stocked up on them. With too little choice, you could easily turn to things that should be well and truly avoided.

As well as the types of food you can eat, there are ways that you have to eat. Damage to the braces will not only be expensive and inconvenient, but will add extra time to the period you have to wear them. The sooner you learn about the do’s and don’ts the better, as you will become adjusted more quickly and will start coming to terms with wearing your braces.

Before discussing what items you can and cannot eat, you need to understand how to eat. For a while it is important to make sure that everything is cut up as small as possible. There is the risk of very small bits getting stuck on the braces, but they can be cleaned off. You should also try and do any chewing that has to be done at the back of the mouth and the teeth that are to be straightened can be protected.

Food You Can’t Eat With Braces

• Anything that must be chewed – This will include things such as a bagel – it may be a form of bread, but it does need quite a bit of chewing. Liquor ice is another item as it can take quite a while to get it soft.
• Sticky items – Sweets such as toffee will be included, as will chewing gum as that could easily get wrapped around the wires. It will also be very unpleasant when you are trying to get it off the braces.
• Items that are hard – Nuts will be the obvious ones, but you should also avoid pretzels, crusty bread and anything that could break the wires.
• Crunching is out, so while it will be fine to put ice in a drink, you must avoid the temptation to crunch it. Popcorn is also out and that comes under a few other categories as well.
• Sugary items will be best avoided as the harshness of the grains will not help the condition of the teeth. It will be easy for them to get blocked between the wires and stick to the teeth.
• Biting – Rather than try to bite an apple or anything hard, it should be made easier to eat. The last thing that you want to do is to put pressure on the teeth or the brace as all that will do is damage it.

It is not only food that should be checked. A lot of people bite their finger nails or chew down on a pencil when they are concentrating, and this can be just as destructive to the braces. As well as the cost of having the braces replaced, there is the damage it does to the process of straightening the teeth. Without the wire in the right place, there will not be the correct movement of the teeth and in a worst-case scenario; they could start going back to the place they were initially in.