Why Sour Candy is Bad for You: PH and Tooth Enamel

Acidic Substances are Bad For You
Sour candy is unhealthy for a number of reasons. First of all, it is in fact candy. Candy has all sorts of lovely sugars that will rot away your teeth if not properly brushed away with toothpaste and a toothbrush. But there are special reasons sour candy is unhealthy. Recall the pH scale from high school. For those of you unaware of the pH scale, it is merely a way to indicate what is acidic, or the opposite of acidic (basic). For reference, water is neither acidic nor basic and is therefore at a pH level of 7, where the most basic things have a pH of 14 and the most acidic things have a pH of 1. From all of this information, you may imagine that sour candy had a pH less than 7 and but much more than 1, as we intuitively understand pure acidic substances are unhealthy.

Why Sour Candy is so Unhealthy
Now, you may or may not know that battery acid has a pH of 1, but this should not surprise you. We are all aware that eating battery acid would be unhealthy, and the pH level is just one way of describing why that is. What should surprise and terrify you is that many types of sour candy have a pH of only slightly more than 1 but less than 2. Just in case you are trying to find any excuse to believe the incredible similarity of acid content between battery acid and sour candy is negligible, tooth enamel, the strong outside of the tooth that protects teeth from wear and damage, is lost when anything with a pH lower than 3 makes contact. It's not just mean parents and hypochondriacs trying to tell you sour candy is unhealthy; it's science.

Being Intelligent About Sour Candy
The bad news is that tooth enamel doesn't grow back. Designed to be the hardest substance in the human body, there was never a real reason for tooth enamel to protect teeth against substances similar to battery acid. Perhaps in the future we will evolve to overcome sour candy's reign of tooth enamel destruction, but in the mean time, sour candy will continue to be unhealthy.

The good news is that, though this article should have radically enforced that sour candy is rather unhealthy, the loss of tooth enamel doesn't become a problem until enough sour candy has been eaten to make a serious dent. This is why it is important to understand the tooth enamel loss risks created by sour candy, as well as moderate and restrict sour candy consumption. Though sour candy is unhealthy, a lot of things we eat are also unhealthy, and many humans desire the right to continue consuming these horrible things, unhealthy or not, just until they threaten to do something like make your teeth fall out. So be safe about sour candy, understand the risks, tell others why it is unhealthy, and eat in moderation.

Which Sour Candy Is The Worst?
Most sour candy is more unhealthy than would be preferred. However, it is true that some types of sour candy are more unhealthy than others. Determining which kind of sour candy is the most unhealthy merely requires checking their pH levels, with the closer their levels being to one, or pure acid, the worse they are for you. Mango sour Altoids, Wonka Fun Dip Powder and War Heads sour spray are some examples of sour candy that are really unhealthy.

WORKS CITED

http://gizmodo.com/5860593/sour-candy-is-almost-as-bad-for-your-teeth-as-battery-acid