Is candy safe to eat when you have braces?

OK, so it’s not Halloween, but candy exists all year round. But what should you be careful with?

There isn’t a whole lot you can do to stop your kids and your teenagers from eating candy on Halloween.

Most of the time, there isn’t a whole lot you can do to stop yourself from eating candy on Halloween, either!

Thankfully though, occasionally indulging with a favorite candy isn’t going to do all that much damage to your teeth. This is especially true if you are brushing twice a day and flossing regularly, and it’s even better if you have a couple of swishes of an antiseptic swirl like Listerine, to boot!

At the same time, when it comes to Halloween candy, you want to make sure that you are at least a little bit vigilant about the types of candy that your kids are eating – particularly if they have braces. Most candies aren’t going to pose that much of a risk to children with braces, but others can produce a scary situation with much longer impacts that go far beyond October 31.

The inside information below will shine a little bit of light on the subject, helping you better understand which candies are good to go on Halloween and which ones should be eaten and enjoyed only very sparingly – if they are enjoyed at all.

Let’s dive right in!

Longer-lasting candies are the worst offenders

Like any other sugary snack, the longer sugar exists in your mouth the greater the potential to damage your teeth, to generate bacterial acid that eats away at additional in the greater potential to cause cavities in the first place.

Hard candies are probably the worst of all the Halloween candy that your children could be eating when they have braces, which is going to come as a surprise to some but it all has to do with the amount of time that the sugar stays in their mouth.

Lollipops, good old-fashioned hard candies, jaw breakers, and other candies designed to be tucked into the side of their cheek and sucked on for a half an hour or more really need to be eliminated from the Halloween basket or enjoyed just one or two total that night.

Other candies that are particularly sticky are going to cause big problems, too

Really sticky candies are also going to stay in your mouth a lot longer than expected, and most of them are going to stay a whole lot longer than you ever could have expected or anticipated – especially if tiny little bits of them get stuck in the mouths of your children and aren’t removed until the next morning when they go to brush and floss!

We’re talking about taffy, caramels, tootsie rolls, bubblegum, and other candies that have that sticky, gooey, almost glue like texture that will find any pocket possible to wedge into your teeth and stick around for as long as humanly possible.

Worst of all, these sticky candies really like to get stuck underneath your braces and tucked into hard to reach corners and crevices of your smile. This makes them all but impossible to remove with regular brushing and may even necessitate a visit to your dentist for a proper cleaning just to get rid of the treats that are eroding away your smile.

Crunchy candies are all right for your teeth but may cause damage to your braces

Believe it or not, crunchy candies aren’t going to cause all that much damage to your teeth and aren’t going to leave sugar residue in your smile for that long and amount of time. Unfortunately though, these candies may cause a bit of collateral damage to your braces and any of the support structures that your braces depend on to adjust and align your smile in the first place.

You’ll want to be pretty careful with how you eat these kinds of snacks, taking careful and deliberate bites to avoid getting them gummed up or jammed into your braces.

What candies are safe to eat with braces?

Good old-fashioned chocolate bars in things like Kit Kat bars are really the way to go if your children are going to be eating candy with braces. Soft candy should also be all right, and as a general rule you should do everything you can to make sure that your children are brushing and flossing their teeth right before they go to bed and when you know they aren’t going to sneak anymore pieces of Halloween candy before they go to sleep.

As we have highlighted a couple of times earlier, it’s really important that you limit the amount of exposure the sugar has to your teeth into your unable as much as possible. This is the number one thing you can do to protect your smile, especially if you have braces in the way and creating little pockets where sugar can “live” almost indefinitely.