Mono mints

I have a liking for mint and a sweet tooth. The problem with most mints is that they are made by adding the mint oils to a sugar base. The sugars in the mint are then fermented by the bacteria in your mouth which in turn release acids, which then de-mineralises your teeth. The saliva in your mouth contains salts to re-mineralise your teeth, but if there is too much acid in one spot decay happens. Decay isn't good for your teeth and it eventually hurts!

In the 1970s in Finland they discovered that certain sugar alcohols such as sorbitol and best of all xylitol taste sweet to our tongues and are poorly absorbed and processed by our bodies making them a lower calorie sweetener than sucrose, but more interestingly they are readily absorbed but indigestible to the bacteria in our mouths, meaning that if you have a sweet with xylitol in, then the bacterial in your mouth starve and it does reduce the number of holes that develop in your teeth!

You can buy xylitol chewing gum, but I find gum unpleasant and so far I've not found a shop selling the hard mints yet. You can by them on-line but I want to try them out first if I can. Yesterday I got some polos with sorbitol in them, and they are okay but sorbitol does have a laxative effect if you have more than a small number you know about it... and it's it's not as good for your teeth as xylitol.

The mint in the centre of this picture is a French Vichy mint, which is made from old fashioned sucrose, thought it does have minerals from the Vichy spa mixed it in and is very nice, though not very thooth friendly!