Kids To Dentists: Thanks For Saying It’s Ok To Gorge On Halloween Candy

In a reveal more shocking than possible life on other planets, dentists have now announced that it’s perfectly fine to let kids gorge themselves on Halloween candy. Dammit, science! You’ve come far too late to help me! 

This may sound like a clever scheme to get your kids into the dentist office a few months down the road for visits they may not have otherwise needed but it’s not. Dentists say that eating a bunch of candy on say, the night of Halloween after you get home from trick-or-treating, is much better for your teeth than rationing it over time. According to LiveScience.com, “Slowly snacking on Halloween candy every few hours, day after day, keeps your teeth bathed in enamel-corroding acid, the byproduct of bacteria feeding on sugar and other carbohydrates in your mouth. This leads to dental caries, or cavities.”

Author of the article, Christopher Wanjek, continues, “For example, as far as oral hygiene goes, it is better to eat five candy bars at once than to eat one every few hours. In the first scenario, acid will build up in your mouth, but your saliva will naturally neutralize this over the course of an hour or so. And then that acid is gone. In the second scenario, you are constantly exposing your teeth to acid throughout the day, too much for saliva to wash away.”

Gorging also is better, he says, because you’re more likely to brush your teeth afterward and potato chips and pretzels are actually worse for your teeth because the cooked carbohydrates stick to them. “Among candy, the sticky and sour kinds are the worst for your teeth,” says the article. “Those gummies that stay lodged in a molar till Thanksgiving are nothing but trouble. Sour candy tends to have more acid, so sour-tasting gummies are a double-whammy.”

This all relates to dental health though, gorging is still pretty terrible for your tummy no matter what. And even though this fun candy advice comes too little, too late for us adults who no longer beg for candy on Halloween, we should worry about another kind of gorging. “If you think candy is the only unhealthy element of Halloween, consider this: Halloween is one of the top three major nights for dangerous binge drinking, along with New Year’s Eve and St. Patrick’s Day, according to an article published last year in the Journal of American College Health.”

(via LiveScience)