Milk causes rotten teeth?

amiaspden

brook2jack wrote: »

Cows milk with nothing in it is fine. Soya milk, oat milk, rice milk lots of sugar.

Surely this depends on whether you choose the sweetened or unsweetened varieties?

The nutritional value panel on my usual brand (M longlife soya drink, unsweetened) says 0.3 grams sugars per 100ml.

The Wikipedia article on cow's milk says it has 5.26g grams sugar (all Lactose) per 100 grams (which is slightly less than 100ml). That's over 5% sugar, whilst my soya milk is 0.3%.

brook2jack

Cows milk has lactose , a milk sugar that mouth bacteria have great difficulty in using to produce acid.

Soya milk is sweetened with syrups and cane sugar ,as unsweetened soya milk is pretty unpalatable. The sweeteners contain sucrose which bacteria find very easy to convert to acid. So despite the fact it has less sugar that sugar can cause decay and indeed parents of children on soya milk are warned about the problems of decay which are well known.

brook2jack

With tooth decay it's not how much sugar you have that's a problem it's how often. So drinks are often a problem as people sip on things during the day and if it's something sugary ,even a little sugar, that means every time you sip something your teeth are under attack.

So soya milk on your breakfast cereal or as a drink with meals is not a problem. As a drink during the day or just before bed it is a problem . A child having to drink it because of lactose intolerance etc will need careful monitoring by dental professionals.

amiaspden

brook2jack wrote: »

Cows milk has lactose , a milk sugar that mouth bacteria have great difficulty in using to produce acid.

Soya milk is sweetened with syrups and cane sugar ,as unsweetened soya milk is pretty unpalatable. The sweeteners contain sucrose which bacteria find very easy to convert to acid. So despite the fact it has less sugar that sugar can cause decay and indeed parents of children on soya milk are warned about the problems of decay which are well known.

You're not seeing my point. My soya milk has a vanishingly small amount of sugar. 0.3 grams would be barely a pinch in a 100ml, less than a teaspoon in a litre. (a teaspoon is about 4 grams).

And I find the sweetened ones unpalatable. They taste awful in tea if you don't take sugar. The unsweetened one is more likely to be sold out than the sweetened one in my experience.

I have no axe to grind against cow's milk, and I'm sure the sweetened brands of soya milk are a problem, but I don't like misinformation being spread about the alternatives. Not ALL soya milk has added sugar.

brook2jack

In my reading an unsweetened soya milk has 1g of sugar in a serving. That's not alot but it's not the amount that's a problem. Even a pinch of sugar is a problem if a product is being consumed several times a day outside of meal Times. It's not the amount it's the frequency of uptake that's the problem.

Even unsweetened soya milk has five to six times the decay producing potential of cows milk because even that little bit of sugar is much more easily used by mouth bacteria than lactose the sugar in cows milk.

Unfortunately most dentists will have seen rapid decay due to consumption of soya milk , particularly in children . Unfortunately most of the other milk substitutes such as rice milk also can cause these sort of problems.

coldstreamalways

If you imagine how small a bacterium is, and then imagine how much energy it requires to keep it producing acid and therefore tooth decay, you will see that a "pinch" of sugar is actually plenty. Especially when it's cane sugar or some such other readily digested carbohydrate.

coldstreamalways

It's not the quantity that is relevant. It's the frequency as the (amazingly patient) brook continues to say.

notanewuser

sacsquacco wrote: »

Milk is another one of those hidden sugars we use. Its just lactose sugar, if used in cereals such as porridge water it down 50/50 with water, and only use skimmed milk

Skimmed milk has more sugar per 100mls than whole milk.

brook2jack

The sugar in milk is lactose , and mouth bacteria have great difficulty in using lactose to produce acid. Cows milk does not , on the whole, cause decay and young children should be drinking whole milk , not skimmed.