Chew on This! Foods You Should Be Eating to Ward Off Ugly Stains

Clean and pristine, sparkling and white, radiant and bright—this is what you want your smile to be, so you spend a lot of time and money on home remedies and tooth-whitening products, and you even try to avoid the things you believe cause stains, like tea and coffee. However, you may actually be going about keeping a whiter smile in the wrong way. The secret to a whiter smile often lies not in avoiding certain foods but in eating the right kinds of foods. There are actually a handful of foods you can chomp on to keep stains, plaque, and even bad breath at bay.

Broccoli - Broccoli is green when fully ready to eat, so you might just assume that broccoli is one of those foods that will give you a grimy smile. However, this veggie is an excellent little treat if you actually want to scrub away stains from your teeth, but this is true of broccoli only in its raw form. Eat the broccoli fresh, and the thousands of tiny little florets on each piece acts as a gentle abrasive to scrub away residue left behind by other foods. 

Carrots - Much like broccoli, carrots in their raw form act as an abrasive agent with every crunch. As you chew, the tidbits of the raw carrot brush against your teeth to polish away stains. You can even use these bright orange roots to rub away at your teeth if you are caught with a less-than-clean smile in the middle of a workday. 

Seeds and Nuts - Seeds and nuts pack a powerful punch of nutritive value and healthy fats, so they are good to have on hand for a quick pick me up throughout the day. However, chewing nuts and seeds also helps to fight off plaque buildup on the enamel of your teeth. Sunflower seeds, walnuts, almonds, and pumpkin seeds are things you can think of as little exfoliators for your teeth that you can crunch on at any given moment. 

Raw Onions - Okay, so maybe eating raw onions sounds a little strange when you want a clean mouth, but these crispy veggies actually work wonders for a brighter, whiter smile. Onions actually contain sulfur compounds, and these sulfur compounds actually coat your teeth and help ward off the formation of plaque for a while after. So even if you feel the need to brush your teeth after eating raw onions because of your breath, you really don't have to. 

Talk to a dentist at an organization such as Pike Dentistry for more information.