Since I know that other moms are probably also interested in how to improve their children’s dental health, I thought I would share some information that I’ve found valuable.  First of all, improving dental health is integrally linked with improving the overall state of the body’s health. The state of your teeth is a reflection of what’s going on in your body.  This contradicts the typical way of looking at the teeth as only cosmetic and independent from the rest of the body, but is a very important distinction. 

The following is what I’ve gleaned from various sources, and made notes on for myself – I’m far from an expert on nutrition.  From what I understand, improving your dental health is a two pronged approach: 1) eliminating/minimizing low quality foods that deplete the nutrients from your body, and 2) adding high quality food that build up the body to your diet. 

What are foods that should be minimize, and ideally eliminated?  There are reasons that each of the following are problematic, but I’ll just share the list of what to work on for now:
– sugars/sweeteners
– hydrogenated fats, margarine
-iodized salt
– processed foods
– pasteurized milk products
– soy foods
– unsoaked grains (even whole grains)

Of this list, I still sometimes use unsoaked whole grains and flour (but I’ve made big improvements in that area!), but otherwise I pretty much have eliminated everything else.

The body needs both calcium and phosphorus, and a lack of it seems to be the cause of tooth decay. Whole grains and soy foods are high in phytic acid, which bind with the phosphorus and escort a significant amount of the nutrients in those foods right out of your body. Soaking them neutralizes the phytic acid so that your body can benefit from the nutrients in your food.

Increasing foods that build the body up:
– bone broths
– cod liver oil
– butter oil

These are the three things I’ve seen most highly recommended to build up teeth. Of these three, I’ve so far only done the bone broths. I use broth quite a bit so that it’s part of our regular diet, even when the kids don’t see it (like to cook rice in). 

Other good things for general health that also positively effect the teeth and should be included as much as possible in the diet are:

– raw milk
– raw butter
– raw honey
– sea salt
– lacto fermented veggies (they strengthen digestion and assimilation)
– soaked/sprouted/fermented grains and flours
– pastured eggs
– saturated fats (animal fats and coconut oil)
– high quality animal protein (meat, chicken, fish)
– lots of veggies

 Of this list, I do most of them most of the time.  Sometimes I use supermarket eggs or regular store butter, but otherwise I’ve integrated all of the other suggestions into our diet.  You’ll notice that some of these are replacements for the list of things to eliminate, raw milk for pasteurized milk, sea salt for iodized salt, soaked grains for unsoaked grains, etc.  So it’s more like you’re substituting one thing for another than actually adding new strange things to your diet.

By the way, as a substitute for margarine and hydrogenated vegetable oil, I use coconut oil.  It perfectly substitutes for shortening.  I also occasionally use extra virgin cold pressed olive oil.  I also render beef/lamb fat and use that to add nutritional value to dishes.  (This is a great irony to me, since this is the kind of thing I used to very much avoid eating, thinking it was bad healthwise.)

Herbs for strengthening teeth:
– horsetail, lemon grass, red raspberry, nettle, lemon balm – I’m guessing these are good because of the vitamin c, but I can’t say for sure.

Avivah