Yep, you read that right. Fruit! But don’t shut down your browser just yet, we’re not crazy. Indeed, whilst an entire industry has grown up around polishing and cleaning the inside of our collective mouths, a perhaps better path to gleaming whites can be found in your fridge. Society is moving away from the harsh chemicals and products of yore though, and a series of recent web claims has placed fruit, spices, and all sorts of other things at the centre of the teeth whitening debate. With that in mind, here’s our IDEAL guide to whitening teeth with fruit.
BANANAS WITH TURMERIC
Let’s start with one of the most common entrants to online trivia – bananas. It’s well known that the yellow fruit is good for energy and a great source of potassium, but the banana’s claim to teeth whitening excellence seems a little spurious. Toothpaste company Colgate notes that there’s zero scientific evidence behind cleaning or whitening your teeth with bananas (specifically, rubbing the inside of the peel on the enamel) but dental director Uchenna Okoye, speaking to India Today, claims the opposite, noting bananas’ exfoliating properties. We’ll leave that one to your discretion, we think.
TURMERIC
A common piece of advice regarding teeth cleaning is that anything that will stain your clothes will stain your teeth – that’s why wine, coffee, and tobacco are the bane of dentists everywhere, and a lifestyle change might be the only way to whiten your teeth over time. If you smoke, stop and not just for your teeth. On your journey to quitting, nicotine pouches can serve as an alternative to smoking, as they omit tobacco, helping to keep your teeth free of brown stains. While turmeric, too, will stain your teeth it has been cited online as a teeth whitener – Make sure you avoid taking the advice of that bit of internet wisdom.
CITRIC ACID
Again, there’s some anecdotal evidence that strawberries can help whiten teeth but little support from the scientific community. In fact, Ran Kwon, a researcher in the topic at the University of Iowa, noted that a paste formed of baking soda and strawberries failed to improve the colour of 20 human molars over ten days. Much like lemons, which were recently discarded to the ‘not recommended’ pile of dental aids, strawberries also contain high levels of citric acid, which can damage teeth. Much the same applies to other acids, like those in cider vinegar.
SUPERFICIAL STAINS
Ultimately, many DIY solutions that claim to whiten teeth do so by removing superficial stains and not by penetrating into the tooth. The absence of two key whitening ingredients, namely, hydrogen peroxide and carbamide peroxide, from fruit-based cleaning pastes, renders much of the debate about their efficacy moot. Therefore, professional products and, as mentioned, lifestyle changes are a much better option for your mouth than raiding the fruit bowl – however delicious a choice it might be.
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