White Wine Erodes Enamel on Your Teeth

It’s a good thing I prefer red wine (pinot noir and tempranillo) over whites, considering a new study conducted by Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. Published in Nutrition Research, the results shockingly found that not only does white wine break down teeth enamel, brushing your teeth may only exacerbate the problem. The good news is that consuming calcium-rich foods, such as cheese, may offset some of the damage. Perhaps there is something intuitively wise to serving wine and cheese together.

Photo by paulaloe

White wine is worse for your teeth than red wine.

In order to study the effects of white wine on teeth, researchers used teeth removed from people ages 40 to 65 and soaked the teeth for up to 24 hours in white wine. The Daily Mail reports:

Teeth soaked in whites had more damage than those left overnight in red wines, the researchers report in the journal Nutrition Research. “Within the limits of this study, it can be predicted that frequent consumption of white wines might lead to severe dental erosion,” said co-author Dr Brita Willershausen…If teeth have been softened by exposure to acids, the damage can be made worse by excessive brushing of the teeth too soon afterwards.

Initial results from examining actual wine drinkers in Germany confirm the study’s results. The study’s authors conclude, “In this study, it was demonstrated that white wines have higher erosive potentials than red wines.”

Even though white wines may rot your teeth, chardonnay may be healthier for your lungs. Science Daily reports on a 2002 study conducted at the University of Buffalo:

In research presented here today (May 20, 2002) at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society, Holger Schunemann, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine and social and preventive medicine in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, reported that drinking wine recently and over a lifetime was associated with better lung function…”This finding may indicate that nutrients in wine are responsible for the positive effect of alcoholic beverages on lung function,” said Schunemann. “Red wine in moderation has been shown to be beneficial for the heart, but in this case the relationship was stronger for white wine.”

I guess when deciding whether to drink red or white wine, one should not consider the meal’s contents, but whether one wants to support lung or dental health.