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Factors Concerned with the Different Erosive Effects of Grapefruit and Grapefruit Juice on Rats' Molar Teeth

Departments of Biology and Chemistry, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut

1. It has been confirmed that consumption of grapefruit juice causes considerably greater erosion of the lower molars of rats than does ingestion of grapefruit sections with similar juice content and pH.

2. When the pressed juice was reconstituted into a simulated "fruit" by the addition of 3% bacto-agar or 5% foamed, compressed gelatin, these preparations affected the teeth in about the same manner as the natural fruit and were much less destructive than the juice from which they were prepared. This implies that the differences are not due to some protective substance present only in the fresh unpressed fruit, or to some destructive agent arising in the juice during the squeezing process.

3. By pair-feeding 8 completely desalivated rats with litter-mate controls, it was shown that salivary buffering had no detectable influence on the extent of enamel erosion induced by either grapefruit or grapefruit juice, and could not explain the different destructive effects of the two supplements.

4. It is concluded that mechanical differences, such as the consistencies of the acid supplements and the different manners of ingestion, rather than chemical differences, are responsible for the effects noted.