Eating with Dentures: a Problem or Not?

Eating with new dentures is one of the main sources of concern for all people who get dentures. The dentures can definitely take some time to get used to and provide several uncomfortable feelings, but that’s something you can live with. What really bothers most of potential denture users is how it impacts your diet. Let’s take a look at this and answer the main question: can you eat with dentures? Spoiler alert: yes.

So what Can I Eat with Dentures?

Well, with time you’ll be able to eat everything you used to with your natural teeth, but it’ll take some time to get used to. And while your mouth is healing and adapting to the new feelings, it’s better to follow some well-known tips. For example, you’ll be better off starting with a liquid diet which will mostly consist of purees and other soft foods, i.e. cooked cereals, puddings and so on. Dentures at first won’t let you judge the temperatures as well as you used to, so be careful with hot foods, and don’t wait too long before swallowing to avoid loosening dentures. If you fell that you’re ready to get on with solid foods, remember to start with the foods cut into many little pieces. Chew a lot, it helps you get used to the dentures. If your food doesn’t taste how you expect it to, don’t panic, it’s pretty normal: your sense of taste will be back after some time. While healing, we’d recommend to substitute tough red meats with something similar but not as hard to chew: eggs, fish, slow-cooked meat etc. Hard and sticky food isn’t prohibited, but be careful with it. Once your mouth has healed, you should be able to eat whatever you want, but it’d still be nice to be careful with it and not overload your new dentures.

But there also are partial dentures, and now we’ll talk about them.

How to Eat with Partial Dentures?

Partial dentures are designed as an easy and practical way to fix a smile but the wearers often experience troubles while eating. To avoid such case and get back to enjoying your meals, let’s figure out some common advices that could help. First of all, you need time to start feeling comfortable again. You can use the tips that we’ve stated earlier in the article for this step, it’ll work. Second, if your partial dentures are up front, for some time you’ll want to avoid biting with your front teeth in order to keep them safe from hurting. You can also cut the foods into smaller pieces or bite them with the sides of your mouth. There’s a small list of foods to avoid when using dentures: popcorn, peanut butter, tough steaks, sticky candy. Not a big loss, eh? And you can still enjoy your steaks, just go for well-done ones. Let’s quickly reiterate what we now know.

Foods to Eat Just After Getting Denture

When your mouth is still healing, a sensible strategy will be to start with liquid diet, consisting of cooked cereals, purees, puddings, cut fruits and so on. After that you can move on to more solid foods and after several weeks (it’s individual, so we can’t give you a detailed prognosis) you’ll be good to go with your standard diet. But for your own good, don’t forget to be careful with tough meat, sticky and hard food that you need to bite. It can still be challenging even after healing, so make sure you keep track of what exactly you eat. Hopefully you'll find this interesting and helpful! Stay tuned for more.