Sugar starts corroding your teeth within seconds – here’s how to protect your pearly whites from decay

Sugar feeds the colonies of bacteria living in your mouth and surrounding your teeth. Andrii Zastrozhnov/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Between Halloween candy, Thanksgiving pies and holiday cookies, the end of the year is often packed with opportunities to consume sugar. But what happens in your mouth during those first minutes and hours after eating those sweets?

While you’re likely aware that eating too much sugar can cause cavities – that is, damage to your teeth – you might be less familiar with how bacteria use those sugars to build a sticky film called plaque on your teeth as soon as you take that first sweet bite.