New Study Indicates That Popular Sports Beverages Cause More Irreversible Damage to Teeth Than Soda

While sports and energy drinks help athletes re-hydrate after a long workout, if consumed on a regular basis they can damage teeth. These beverages may cause irreversible damage to dental enamel, potentially resulting in severe tooth decay.

This study revealed that the enamel damage caused by non-cola and sports beverages was three to 11 times greater than cola-based drinks, with energy drinks and bottled lemonades causing the most harm to dental enamel.

The study continuously exposed enamel from cavity-free molars and premolars to a variety of popular sports beverages, including energy drinks, fitness water and sports drinks, as well as non-cola beverages such as lemonade and ice tea for a period of 14 days (336 hours). The exposure time was comparable to approximately 13 years of normal beverage consumption.

The study findings revealed that there was significant enamel damage associated with all beverages tested. Results, listed from greatest to least damage to dental enamel, include the following: lemonade, energy drinks, sports drinks, fitness water, ice tea and cola. Most cola-based drinks may contain one or more acids, commonly phosphoric and citric acids; however, sports beverages contain other additives and organic acids that can advance dental erosion. These organic acids are potentially very erosive to dental enamel because of their ability to breakdown calcium, which is needed to strengthen teeth and prevent gum disease.

We encourage you to try altering or limiting the intake of soda and sports drinks and choosing water or low fat milk instead, to preserve tooth enamel and ultimately protect teeth from decay.

January/February 2005 issue of General Dentistry , the Academy of General Dentistry 's J. Anthony von Fraunhofer, FRSC, FADM, lead author, Professor of Biomaterials Science at the University of Maryland Dental School .

The average American today drinks over 600 servings of pop a year.***

Soda Facts

(Source: Gutkowski, Shirley, RDH, BSDH “Ahhhhh … those BUBBLES,” RDH Magazine, 10/2002)

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Water in Tap Beats Bottled, Group Says

People looking for the purest, healthiest and maybe the tastiest water need look no further than their kitchen faucet, the world's largest environmental group says.

In many cases the only difference between expensive bottled water and tap water is the container, the World Wide Fund for Nature said this week. ''Bottled water may be no safer or healthier than tap water in many countries while it sells for up to 1,000 times the price,'' the Swiss-based conservation group reported.

Turning on the tap would help not only one's wallet but also the environment, it added, because 1.5 million tons of plastic are used each year to bottle water, said Dr. Biksham Gujja, head of WWF International's Fresh Water Program.

And toxic chemicals released during the manufacture and disposal of bottles can release gases that contribute to climate change, the group said, releasing a University of Geneva study.

Over the long term, Dr. Gujja said, the increasing popularity of bottled water threatens to erode regulatory standards for tap water. But for now tap water standards in Europe and the United States are higher than those governing bottled water, the study found.

''In fact, there are more standards regulating tap water in Europe and the United States than those applied to the bottled water industry,'' said WWF International, known as World Wildlife Fund in the United States.

Some bottled water, Dr. Gujja added, is simply tap water, but in a fancy container.

The $22 billion-a-year bottled water industry was quick to respond. ''If municipal water is used as a source for bottled water, it typically undergoes additional processing and purification for quality, safety and taste,'' Stephen Kay of the International Bottled Water Association, based in Alexandria, Va., said in a telephone interview.

He added that the industry and governments are preparing to adopt worldwide standards this summer to assure uniform quality.

Still, bottled water is so popular that there are more than 700 brands of water produced worldwide. The champion bottled water drinkers are Western Europeans, who consume nearly half of the product.

Eau, no: Clean, healthy and pure? Hardly.
Bottled water is killing the planet

The US's second most imported brand, Fiji, which is shipped around the world from the middle of the South Pacific, has been gaining ground in the UK. Fashionable London restaurant Nobu charges £5 for small bottles, and is even rumoured to boil its rice in it. It has been featured in popular TV series such as Sex and the City and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and is rumoured to be the choice of Tom Cruise, Ozzy Osbourne, Heather Graham, Jennifer Aniston and Renee Zellwe Bottled water, the designer-look drink that has become a near-universal accessory of modern life, may be refreshing but it certainly isn't clean. A major new study has concluded that its production is seriously damaging the environment.

It costs 10,000 times more to create the bottled version than it does to produce tap water, say scientists. Huge resources are needed to draw it from the ground, add largely irrelevant minerals, and package and distribute it - sometimes half-way around the world.

The plastic bottles it comes in take 1,000 years to biodegrade, and in industrialised countries, bottled water is no more pure and healthy than what comes out of the tap.

The new study comes from the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), a Washington-based environmental group which has previously alerted the world to melting ice caps, expanding deserts and the environmental threats of a rapidly industrialising China. It points out that the world consumed a staggering 154 billion litres of bottled water in 2004 - an increase of 57 per cent in just half a decade.

Emily Arnold, the report's author, said: "Even in areas where tap water is safe to drink, demand for bottled water is increasing - producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy."

Leading activists and high profile environmentalists yesterday voiced their approval of the study, and concern over the effect our seemingly insatiable appetite for bottled water is having.

Bob Geldof said: "Bottled water is bollocks. It is the great irony of the 21st century that the most basic things in the supermarket, such as water and bread, are among the most expensive. Getting water from the other side of the world and transporting it to sell here is ridiculous. It is all to do with lifestyle."

Dr Michael Warhurst, Friends of the Earth's senior waste campaigner, said: "It is another product we do not need. Bottled water companies are wasting resources and exacerbating climate change.

"Transport is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, and transporting water adds to that. We could help reduce these damaging effects if we all simply drank water straight from the tap."

According to the EPI report, tap water is delivered through an "energy-efficient infrastructure", whereas bottled water is often shipped halfway across the world, burning huge amounts of fossil fuels and accelerating global warming. In 2004, for example, Finnish company Nord Water sent 1.4 million bottles of Helsinki tap water to a client in Saudi Arabia. In the same year, producing the plastic bottles that delivered 26 billion litres of water to Americans required more than 1.5 million barrels of oil - enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year.

Peter Ainsworth, the shadow Secretary of State for Environment, said: "It doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to work out that they're on to something here. It is obvious that there are big environmental issues around bottled water, and people need to be made more aware of them."

The UK is by no means the biggest consumer of bottled water - the average Briton drank 33 litres in 2004, a sixth of the amount drunk by the typical Italian - but sales are rocketing. Coca-Cola bought the Malvern brand in 1999, seeing it as a remedy to falling sales of soft drinks.

The US's second most imported brand, Fiji, which is shipped around the world from the middle of the South Pacific, has been gaining ground in the UK. Fashionable London restaurant Nobu charges £5 for small bottles, and is even rumoured to boil its rice in it. It has been featured in popular TV series such as Sex and the City and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and is rumoured to be the choice of Tom Cruise, Ozzy Osbourne, Heather Graham, Jennifer Aniston and Renee Zellweger.