If someone doesn’t want to use harsh chemicals on their teeth, then using fruit as an at home teeth bleaching method sounds ideal. Mash some strawberries and brush your teeth with them. Rub lemon peel across your teeth, to make them whiter. What could be better than going all natural like this? The problem is that as a teeth whitening system, even using these natural elements may ultimately do more harm than good to the teeth.
Citric acid does have some effect as a natural, at home teeth bleaching method. But before this is taken as proof that using lemons or oranges is the best means of creating whiter teeth, it should be noted that this acid produces the effect, in part, by leeching calcium from the tooth enamel. Calcium actually produces a darker color, so removing it will have an automatic teeth bleaching effect. Yet removing the calcium thins the enamel, ultimately making the teeth weaker. So there’s a dark side to whitening the teeth with citric acid.
Do strawberries fare better as a homemade teeth whitening method? Not really. The seeds are abrasive and can scrape and damage the teeth, and the acid can have a similar effect to that in lemons. In fact, the acid in strawberries actually softens the enamel. This is why people advise that someone should wait twenty minutes after eating these berries before brushing the teeth, to give the saliva a chance to replenish the minerals in the enamel. Using strawberries themselves to brush the teeth, certainly on a regular basis, is probably not the best means of making the teeth white.
Using fruit as an at home teeth bleaching method may, ironically, produce the exact opposite of the results people want. Most of the yellowish color in teeth comes from the dentin inside, which underlies the translucent enamel. Anything that makes the enamel thinner is bound, in the end, to allow the yellowish color of the dentin to become more prominent rather than less. What was meant as a dental whitener could in fact make the teeth appear more yellow. So even though the goal of avoiding harsh chemicals is laudable, substituting fruit instead may not provide a better result.
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