a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down.

I took the four year old to the dentist. It went so well. The dental hygienist made a big deal about keeping the sugar bugs away. The dentist was great, talked to my daughter, explained things, and talked to me like I am a partner in the keep teeth healthy process.
Why am I talking about this on a food blog? Well, because the dentist recommended, almost insisted, on something that made me stop. She said no more dried fruit.
This stopped me in my tracks. We don’t do candy. We rarely do cookies or cake or ice cream. But, raisins, dried cranberries, dried pineapple, those are my bribes. Yes, in fact, I call them candy. The lovely dentist pointed out that the gooey sweet natural goodness is sweet and gooey. By giving my girls dried fruit (oh, how good are dried blueberries?), I am coating their teeth with the sugary goo.
She is right. I don’t let my girls regularly drink juice. I don’t want them to get those calories without the fiber nor do I want them bathing their teeth in fruit sugars (and any added sugar). And, once I think about it, it makes sense.
Of course, she did recommend that the four year old have her teeth sealed. Yeah, after her teeth are sealed, in the words of the dentist “she can have all the real candy she wants”. Um, in a word, NO.