Eating with Braces
A practical list of what's fine, what to leave out and why, what to eat while your teeth are tender, and how to keep tooth-coloured braces looking clean.
What Can You Eat with Braces, and What Should You Avoid?
With fixed braces you can eat most everyday foods if they're soft enough to chew easily, cut into small pieces and chewed with your back teeth. Avoid anything hard you'd crunch, such as nuts, boiled sweets and ice, anything sticky like toffee and chewing gum, and biting straight into apples, raw carrots or corn on the cob, because these can knock a bracket off or bend the wire. Your teeth will usually feel tender for a few days after the braces go on and after each adjustment. At St Vincent Smile in Finnieston, Glasgow, Dr Umer Hameed provides tooth-coloured fixed braces from £3,500.
Braces in Glasgow at St Vincent Smile ›
Why Food Matters with Fixed Braces
Fixed braces are small brackets bonded to the front of each tooth and joined by a wire. The bond is strong enough to move teeth, but it isn't designed to take the force of biting into something hard with your front teeth, or the pull of something sticky. A bracket that comes off stops pushing its tooth until it's put back, and a bent wire can push a tooth the wrong way. Most of the advice below comes down to two habits: cut food into pieces small enough to go straight to your back teeth, and leave out the handful of foods that are hard or sticky.
What You Can Eat
Far more than most people expect. If it's soft enough to chew comfortably and cut into small pieces, it's usually fine.
- Breakfast: porridge, soft cereal soaked in milk, yoghurt, scrambled or poached eggs, pancakes, soft bread without a hard crust
- Meals: pasta, rice and noodles, fish, chicken or meat cut off the bone into small pieces, mince, stews and curries, soup, omelettes, risotto
- Vegetables: anything cooked until tender, such as potatoes, carrots, broccoli and peas; raw salad leaves are fine
- Fruit: bananas, berries, melon, grapes, oranges in segments, and apples or pears sliced thin rather than bitten
- Snacks: soft cheese, hummus, soft crackers, smoothies and milkshakes now and then, and soft cakes without nuts or toffee
Sandwiches and burgers are fine too if you cut them up rather than biting through them with your front teeth.
Thinking About Braces?
A free consultation tells you whether braces or Invisalign suits your teeth.
What to Avoid, and Why
- Hard foods: nuts, boiled sweets, ice cubes, hard crisps, crusty rolls and hard taco shells. Crunching them can crack the bond under a bracket.
- Sticky and chewy foods: toffee, caramel, fudge, chewy sweets and chewing gum. They cling to the brackets and wire and can pull them loose.
- Things you'd bite into: whole apples, raw carrots, corn on the cob and ribs or wings eaten off the bone. Slice, grate or cut them off first and they're usually fine.
- Popcorn: the husks wedge under the wire and into the gum, and unpopped kernels are hard enough to break a bracket.
- Sugary and fizzy drinks: sugar and acid sitting around the brackets can leave permanent white marks on the enamel. Keep them to mealtimes, and rinse with water afterwards.
Habits count as well. Chewing pens, biting your nails or opening packets with your teeth puts the same strain on a bracket as a hard sweet.
Eating in the First Few Days
Your teeth usually ache for a few days once the braces are fitted, and again briefly after each adjustment visit, as they begin to move. Plan softer meals for those days: soup, pasta, mashed potato, scrambled eggs, yoghurt, porridge and smoothies. Cold food and drink can be soothing. Over-the-counter painkillers, at the dose on the pack, help if you need them.
The brackets can rub the inside of your cheeks and lips at first, until they toughen up. A small piece of orthodontic wax, from a pharmacy, pressed over the bracket that's rubbing makes eating more comfortable while that happens.
Keeping Tooth-Coloured Braces Looking Clean
Tooth-coloured brackets are chosen so they blend in with your teeth. If your braces use clear elastic ties to hold the wire, those ties can take on colour from deeply coloured foods and drinks: curry, turmeric, tomato sauce, coffee, tea and red wine. Rinsing with water after them, and brushing when you can, keeps things looking clean between visits.
Food collects around brackets far more easily than on bare teeth, so brush after meals, angling the brush above and below the wire, and use small interdental brushes between the brackets. Hygiene visits with Airflow air polishing reach around brackets and wires that a toothbrush struggles with. Our guide to gum care at home shows how to use interdental brushes.
If a Bracket Comes Loose
It can happen even when you're careful, and it's rarely urgent. If the bracket is still held on the wire, leave it where it is, and cover it with orthodontic wax if it's rubbing. If a piece comes off completely, keep it and bring it with you. Don't try to glue anything back yourself. Call us and we'll arrange a time to repair it, because until it's fixed that tooth isn't being moved as planned.
Braces or Aligners at Mealtimes
This is one of the real differences between the two. Invisalign aligners are taken out for every meal, so nothing is off the menu, but you brush before they go back in, and they need wearing for 20 to 22 hours daily. Fixed braces stay on, so you don't have to remember to wear them, but you do have to eat around them. Dr Hameed provides both, and at a free consultation he'll tell you which suits your teeth. Our page on tooth-coloured fixed braces in Glasgow explains how he decides, and our guide to Invisalign or braces for adults compares the two in more detail.
Questions
This guide is general information, not a diagnosis. A dentist needs to examine you to say what is right for your teeth.