How to Eat With New Dentures

As you grow accustomed to wearing your new dentures from a dentist near you, they may feel uncomfortable and awkward. Because your mouth and gums are not accustomed to the presence of dentures, you will produce more saliva than usual, and your gums may feel sore. Eating with new dentures may feel awkward, slipper, and uncomfortable.

Over time, you’ll become accustomed to the new shape of your mouth, the new sensations as you eat with dentures, and how your perception of food, taste, and texture changes.

While you are adjusting to your dentures from a dentist, here are 12 tips for eating with your new dentures.

1. When you first receive your new dentures, limit yourself to a liquid (or nearly liquid) diet of purees and very soft foods. Appropriate soft foods include apple sauce, pudding, cooked (warm) cereal, warm (not hot) broth, and chopped boiled eggs.
2. The material from which your dentures are made insulates against heat differently than natural tissue. Your perception of hot and cold will change. Eat hot foods and drink beverages cautiously until you become accustomed to those new perceptions.
3. Don’t let the liquid linger in your mouth for too long when drinking or eating hot liquids. Prolonged exposure to hot liquids can loosen the denture on your lower gums.
4. Food will taste differently with dentures partly because it covers tissue in your mouth and changes your ability to perceive texture. With time, your sense of taste will improve.
5. When you’re ready to graduate from your nearly liquid diet, transition to a mechanical soft diet. A mechanical soft diet includes foods that break apart without using a knife and chopped, ground and pureed foods. Even at this stage, cut your food into very small pieces requiring minimal chewing.
6. When transitioning to chewing with your mechanical soft diet, be sure your food is distributed evenly in your mouth. Don’t overload one side of your dentures, but focus on balancing each side so your dentures will remain stable.
7. Everything your mother told you about chewing your food well before swallowing applies to dentures, too. Chew your food thoroughly before swallowing to avoid choking.
8. At this stage, fruits and vegetables should be cooked before you eat them, or — if you’re going to eat them raw — they should be sliced very thinly or chopped into very small pieces so they can be chewed easily.
9. You may notice that they stick to the teeth in your dentures when eating bread and cereals made with whole grains. Please don’t give up eating those whole-grain foods because they’re important to your diet, but eat them with fluids so they’ll be easier to chew and swallow.
10. Rather than eating (non-ground) red meat, focus on easier-to-eat options such as poultry, fish, eggs, and legumes. When eating (non-ground) red meat, consider stews, pot roasts and slow-cooked dishes where the meat is very tender.
11. Eating hard or sticky foods — corn on the cob and taffy (now there’s an odd combination!) are two examples — will be very difficult with dentures. Denture adhesive will help you eat some difficult foods, but you may find it difficult to continuously eat hard and sticky items.
12. Be patient with yourself as you adapt to eating with your new dentures, and understand that soreness along your gums and the muscles in your mouth (including your tongue) is normal and to be expected.