Eat Your Vegetables... & Then Your Xylitol

The Secret Weapon You Need to Keep Your Child's Cavities at Bay

If you’re a parent, then you know how hard it is to get your kids to eat anything more than precisely what they want. Sometimes, you can’t even do that.

Raise your hand if your child has asked for chicken nuggets and then gawked at the perfectly crafted plate you prepared because they now want pizza.

Of course, we all want our kids to be as healthy as possible, but getting anything nutritious into them can seem like an impossible feat.

Luckily, successful parents before us have come up with oodles of ideas, like hiding veggies in soups, blending them into sauces, dressing them up as cute critters, buttering and seasoning skillfully, or my personal favorite… bribing with a scoop of ice cream after dinner. I know… hashtag health, amiright?

The cycle of parenthood is a beautiful thing because right after you’ve worn yourself thin trying to get some semblance of nutrition into your child, you get to repeat the fight all over again with brushing (and maybe even flossing) before bedtime (if you haven’t used the ice cream bribing method again at this point, we’re not on the same parenting level).

So, let’s say you do a great job with all of this. Feeding your kids healthy meals, letting them run wild around your house for “exercise,” and being so on top of brushing that you really should get a medal.

But then you go to the dentist, and the dentist says, “Timmy’s mouth is so full of cavities that I’ll be able to take my wife to Italy this year.”

You don’t feel like the parent of the year at that point.

What have you been wasting all your time and energy on to keep little Timmy healthy if cavities are just growing like weeds in his mouth?

Do You Know Your Kids’ Cavities Are Not Your Fault?

Crazy, right? The brushing is helpful (so we don’t suggest that you stop), but– as rebellious as it may sound – brushing is not enough to ward off cavities.

This is because cavities result from bacteria in your mouth feeding off of carbohydrates left from your meals, snacks, and drinks and creating acidic, tooth-decaying waste.

Brushing and flossing disrupt these little gunky junkies a bit but don’t remove them.

This means, even when you’re smiling because your kids are chomping on carrots, these bacteria are smiling, too! It’s because they’re getting a feast of tasty carbohydrates to fill up on.

They’ll then turn those scrumptious snacks into acid, which will wreak havoc on little Timmy’s smile.

It's rare in parenting, but we have the secret to fixing this.

Have you heard of Xylitol? Xylitol is a natural sweetener that these bacteria baddies loooooove but can’t digest properly.

That means when given pure sugar or xylitol, these bacteria will go to town on the xylitol and treat the sugar like the raw broccoli on a veggie tray that everyone agrees shouldn’t be there. Once these suckers get their fill on the Xylitol they can’t digest, they’ll die.

Yeah, harsh.

But, you won’t be holding any funerals for them. You’ll be too busy celebrating after your kids’ next dental visit.

So, here’s my real oral care parenting hack – worry less about your kids being perfect brushers and more about them getting enough xylitol each day to keep the bacterial baddies at bay.

How?

It’s easy – Epic’s gum and mints taste more like candy than toothpaste. My family’s personal favorite? The fresh fruit mints.

Once you find the flavor for your family, the real battle won’t be fighting off cavities; it’ll be keeping enough Epic in stock.