Strong healthy teeth are extremely important to enable us to eat, and to maintain a healthy balanced diet by consuming a variety of different foods. Our teeth provide the mechanism through which we can begin to break up food in the mouth and mix it with saliva to make it easier to swallow and digest.
Structure and development
Teeth begin to form in the fetus in the very early stages of pregnancy, and gradually develop inside the gums before erupting through them during the first years of life. The hard protective layer surrounding our teeth is known as enamel and is largely made up from calcium and phosphate in a crystalline complex known as hydroxyapatite.
Good nutrition is extremely important throughout pregnancy and infancy in order to provide sufficient “tooth building” nutrients such as calcium and phosphorous to ensure that teeth have a normal healthy structure.
