Eating with Braces

Orthodontists attach braces to your teeth with a small amount of adhesive. This adhesive is designed to hold the brackets and bands in place during treatment. When it’s time to remove the braces, the adhesive is scraped off the teeth without leaving any permanent marks. It really doesn’t take much force to remove or break the braces off your teeth. That’s good because it allows for easy removal when your treatment is done. It’s also bad because any heavy force put on your braces could break them off and extend the treatment time.

Hard and Sticky Foods

Goodies can and will break brackets, loosen bands and bend or break wires. Please don’t eat these types of things. They’ll break your braces and, in turn, interfere with treatment, extending your treatment time.

Foods High in Sugar Content

Braces make it harder to keep your teeth clean. Sugar will feed the bacteria that cause cavities, decalcification, and ugly staining on your teeth. If you do eat foods high in sugar, brush your teeth immediately.

So, please use common sense, be very careful and watch what you eat. The following is just a small list to help guide you. Remember, nothing hard, sticky or sweet!

Do Not Eat

• Ice - not even if you’re careful!
• Bubble gum of any type
• Nuts, peanut brittle
• Taffy, caramel candies
• Corn chips, hard tacos, hard pretzels and the like.

Be Careful With

• Pizza. Cut into bite sizes
• Carrot sticks. Cut them into thin pieces
• Apples. Cut into wedges; don’t bite
• Corn-on-the-cob. Cut the corn off the cob
• Meat or chicken on the bone. Cut the meat off the bone.

Please be considerate of your braces and wires. And, if something does break, please don’t blame us, our braces or our adhesives. We do use the most modern and finest braces and adhesives that are available! Carelessness can only result in unnecessary breakage, which will interfere with progress and extend treatment time.

Special thanks to the American Association of Orthodontists and Dr. Mark Bronsky for the making of this video.