What you can and cannot eat

Off the menu for the duration

• Hard: ice, boiled sweets, nuts, popcorn kernels, hard taco shells, pork crackling, crusty baguette ends, raw carrot sticks, corn on the cob eaten straight off the cob.
• Sticky: toffee, caramel, chewing gum, taffy, sticky granola bars, dried fruit that clings.
• Habits: chewing pens, fingernails, ice from a drink. These break more brackets than food does.

The reason is mechanical. A bracket is bonded to withstand steady orthodontic force from one direction, not a sudden shear load from another. Sticky foods do their damage by gripping the bracket and pulling as the jaw opens.

Fine, with modification

Food	How
Apples and pears	Sliced, chewed on the back teeth
Corn	Cut from the cob
Pizza	Yes; leave the hard crust ends
Steak and chicken	Off the bone, cut small
Bagels and crusty bread	Torn into pieces rather than bitten through
Chocolate	Plain is fine; avoid nut and caramel fillings
Popcorn	Genuinely best avoided — kernels wedge under bands

The sugar question

Nothing about braces changes what sugar does, but braces change the consequences. Brackets create dozens of new places for plaque to sit undisturbed, so frequent sugar combined with average brushing produces decalcification — the chalky white marks around where brackets were — far faster than it would otherwise. Sipping sweet drinks through the day is worse than eating a dessert at once, because it keeps the enamel under acid attack for hours. Water between meals is the single easiest change.

Eating out and travelling

Order what you want and cut it up. Carry a travel toothbrush and a small pack of interdental brushes; the visible fix for food catching in brackets is the reason many people feel self-conscious eating with braces, and it takes thirty seconds to solve. On a long trip, take wax and know that a poking wire can be pushed flat with the end of a pencil eraser until you are home.