You can tell fall is coming by the shorter days, cooler nights, and changing leaves — or by the grocery shelves suddenly full of products that no reasonable person ever thought would be made better by pumpkin spice.
But beyond the pumpkin spice cookies and cereals and pancake mixes and coffee creamers and pretzels and popcorn and cheese, and even bacon — yes, really — there’s still the undisputed king of pumpkin spice season: the pumpkin spice latte.
Starbucks’ famous PSL returned last week, with Martha Stewart hawking the admittedly “basic” drink and social videos making it clear that the PSL has become a familiar cultural and seasonal marker over its 20+ years of existence.
It’s also a real sugar bomb — with roughly 50 grams of sugar in a grande (16 ounces), or about as much as in 16 ounces of Coca-Cola.
And as sugary as it is, that’s not even close to the upper limit for today’s sweetened coffee drinks, seasonal or otherwise. A small (16 ounce) Pumpkin Pie Coffee Chiller from Dunkin’ contains 71 grams of sugar. Go large, and you’re looking at 139 grams, nearly all of which are added sugars.
Of course, the link between sugar and tooth decay is one of those things “everyone” knows, even if they can’t explain why. Feed sugar and other fermentable carbohydrates to certain bacteria in your mouth, and they produce acid that can strip minerals from tooth enamel. Do it often enough — and without enough enamel repair in between — and you create conditions that favor decay.
In fact, the actual amount of sugar — astonishing as it is — may matter less than how you consume it. Each sip and swallow means another carb feast for the bacteria that make up the biofilm (plaque) on your teeth. The microbes produce more acids. Given enough time, saliva could help neutralize those acids and return the oral pH to a healthy neutral.
Instead, you take another sip. And another. And another. Each sip interrupts that recovery process and starts another acid-producing episode.
That’s why many researchers looking at sugar and tooth decay don’t measure only how much sugar people consume. They also look at how often they consume it.
In fact, a systematic review published earlier this year looked specifically at the relative importance of frequency versus quantity. With its authors drawing on 37 studies involving more than 59,000 children and adolescents,
The evidence consistently indicated that the frequency of sugar consumption was a stronger determinant of caries development than the total quantity consumed.
Keep in mind that coffee-based drinks aren’t unique in their ability to cause dental problems. Some people may nurse sodas throughout the day. Or sweet tea. Or energy drinks. Or juice. It’s the nursing behavior, drinking the beverage over an extended period of time, that doesn’t give teeth a chance to recover.
But coffees do make for an interesting example because they usually occupy a different place in people’s thinking. Coffee is more than just another drink. It’s a morning ritual. It’s something to grab on your way to work and keep beside you as you get the day underway.
And more often than not, it’s not the plain, black brew that people are drinking. It’s loaded with flavored syrups, sweetened milks, sauces, whipped cream, cold foam, drizzles, and more. Depending on how long you take to drink it, one drink like this may count for more than a single sugar episode. Spread across hours, it would be more appropriate to think of it as a series of exposures.
Sure,PSLs can be tasty, and we understand how there are all kinds of foods and drinks that people look forward to each year. Just consider the PSL as both something you can excitedly anticipate and enjoy in the moment rather than all day every day.
Instead, have it with breakfast or drink it in a relatively short period instead of taking a few sips here and there for hours. Follow it with some water. And if you like having coffee beside you all morning, make the lingering cup one without the added sugar.
While those 50 grams of sugar may be the number that jumps out from the PSL’s nutrition facts, for your teeth, the clock matters, too.
