I was wondering if Xylitol can help keep your teeth strong from a lack of chewing with Huel?
If anyone knows of any other alternatives I would appreciate it.
Also, any reports on how severely lack of chewing could affect your teeth and gums?
Hey Ethan, here’s some helpful information on liquid diets/chewing. Digestion does begin with chewing; it starts the breakdown of solid food to increase the surface area and there’s also one enzyme - salivary amylase, which breaks down the polysaccharide starch into the disaccharide maltose.
However, with liquid diets, this has already been done for you and salivary amylase has very little effect on total starch digestion - it merely kick starts carb digestion as, in the stomach, it itself is broken down (enzymes are proteins). It’s sister enzyme pancreatic amylase which acts in the intestines has a more pronounced effect where even previously solid food is liquid chyme. Huel has fine milled oats as the carb source and these are a lot easier to break down further than whole oats.
Really, the only minor concern with liquid diet is the ‘lazy’ peristalsis and we’ve addressed this with the inclusion of soluble and insoluble fibers in Huel. And this issue has been shown to be minimal and of no issue when people revert back to solid diets.
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Any dentists here that would like to comment on the idea that chewing keeps teeth strong?
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Could chew some gum 
Are you going 100% Huel? I think teeth should stay strong, as it is their nature to do so. Also, if you are not 100% Huel, then you are still chewing some solid foods which should be plenty. (As far as I know/my opinion)
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I hear the bone stuff a lot and I would love to see some kind of study to support it. Why would bones not being used make them weaker? They aren’t muscles, after all.
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Bones do get stronger when stressed (weight bearing exercise etc). But I am not sure about teeth, and teeth weakening from lack of chewing. hmm… hard to find info on it too
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