06/24/2020
IF YOU WANT PROOF of how bad sugar is for our teeth, just look at Elizabethan England. Sugar was the hot new fad among the aristocracy in the days of Queen Elizabeth I. It was so expensive that it was almost its own currency, and only the wealthy could afford it as an ingredient in their food. 💸
Unfortunately for all those lords and ladies, they didn’t realize the dental health implications. In fact, they actually used sugar paste to brush their teeth! It wasn’t long until black teeth became a symbol of wealth, which gave rise to the perplexing fashion among the lower classes of artificially blackening their teeth to appear richer. 🤔
Few felt the effects of sugar as much as Queen Elizabeth herself. The people around her knew better than to gossip about her appearance, but late in her life, one French ambassador is recorded to have said that her teeth were “very yellow and unequal,” and a German traveler went even further, describing “her teeth black (a fault the English seem to suffer from because of their great use of sugar).” Despite her dental troubles, Elizabeth was terrified of dental treatment (or what passed for it back then). A bishop had to get one of his teeth pulled to prove to her that it was worth it! 😮
