Lack of Correlation Between Food Retention on the Human Dentition and Consumer Perception of Food Stickiness

When dental health professionals advise that sticky foods be avoided, it is left to the consumer to choose correctly among different foods. In this study, comparisons were made among consumer ratings of stickiness of 21 commercially available foods and objective measurements of tooth retention of each of the foods. No correlation was found between the two, and neither the rates of clearance of food particles from the teeth nor the rates of clearance of food-derived sugars from the saliva correlated with ratings of food stickiness. Cookies, crackers, and potato chips were most retentive, whereas caramels, jelly beans, raisins, and milk chocolate bars were among those poorly retained. Clearance rates appeared to vary inversely with initial retention. However, chocolate-caramel bars exhibited high initial retention and a very rapid rate of clearance from the teeth. The findings show that consumers cannot accurately assess the retentiveness of foods and, thus, the advice simply to avoid sticky ones is inadequate.