Dentist Answers: Is Red Wine or White Wine Better for Your Teeth!? The pH of Wine!
Your Teeth and Wine
In this episode of the What pH is That? series we take a look at one of the most popular beverages of human history. We finally settle the debate, which wine is best?! Sparkling, white, or red. You may be surprised to discover just how acidic wine is, and how much damage a good bottle can do! Each style of wine has a range for which the acidity falls within. Watch along to see what pH your favourite style comes in at! We look at Sparkling whites, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon.
Video Transcript
Hi guys, thanks for joining me in another video in the What pH is that series.. today's video is on... wine.
Wine is a super popular drink, that lots of us enjoy, on a weekly if not daily basis. It's pretty well known that wine makers have notoriously bad teeth. Today we are going to be investigating the pH of wine to see why it might be occurring.
Any pH that is less than the 5.5 is going to be damaging our teeth. The average person takes about 40 minutes for the saliva to bring the pH back up in our mouths to a safe level that isn't sucking the minerals out and causing damage. So if you are a person that loves to enjoy wine, go right ahead, just be conscious of the way you do it. So if you are someone that sits down and has a glass of wine with a meal, perfect, no problems at all. If you are somebody who sips on wine for hours at a time, that's the type of way of consuming wine that is going to damage your teeth. That is why wine makers have a lot of problems with their teeth, because they are constantly sipping small amounts over long periods of time.
It's not necessarily the volume, the total amount that you have, it's just how long the wine is in your mouth over a period of time.
So if you are someone who enjoys wine by sipping it over a long period of time, try and have a glass of water with you, just regular water, not sparkling water, because sparkling water is also acidic. Just try and have a couple of sips of water between your sips of wine, just to rinse that acidic residue off your teeth. Once the enamel and the tooth structure has been eroded away, unfortunately there's nothing we can do to put it back that's easy.
The pH for both white sparkling's, is 3.5 T
he organic sauvignon blanc was 3.3 and the pH for the chardonnay was between 3.4 and 3.5
The pH for the shiraz and the cabinet sauvignon was 3.8 for both of them.
What you don't see me doing off camera, is after I've used the pH meter is rinsing it with distilled water and then recalibrating it in the buffer solution. This ensures that we have an accurate measure in each solution with the pH.
So there you have it guys, the pH of 3 different styles of wine. The sparkling's were 3.5. The Whites, one was 3.3 and one was 3.4. The reds were both 3.8. The way pH works is that the smaller the number, the more acidic. So a pH of 7 is neutral.. and any pH that is below 5.5 is going to suck the minerals out of our teeth, just like the dementor sucks the souls out of the people in Harry Potter. You can check out our other video on soda water and I talk about it quite a bit there.
So yeah my dad was right, red wine is better for you. Having said that, I am going to enjoy this beautiful Burtelli Red, here in his lovely Chardonnay vines, and enjoy the last little bit of sunlight.. until next time guys.. cheers. It's very good.
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