In vitro evaluation of soft drinks containing calcium lactate

Introduction: Over the past 2 years, the soft drink industry has seen a value growth of 11%. In total, 1.3 billion people in India drink nearly 5.9 billion liters of soft drinks per year making it one of the highest soft drink-consuming countries in the world. Hence, products such as calcium lactate which efficiently reduce the erosive action of drinks should be better incorporated in soft drinks to limit its adverse effects. Aim: The objective of this study was to assess the degree of dental erosion due to soft drinks with and without the presence of 5% calcium lactate. Materials and Methods: Three soft drinks (MaazaCoca-Cola, AppyFizParleAgro, and PepsiPepsiCo) and normal water were taken. A total of 40 dental blocks were randomly allocated into four groups. Surface loss (SL) was assessed using Digital Surfometry. Surfometry readings were taken before and after adding calcium lactate in the above soft drinks for definite time intervals. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 22. ANOVA was used to assess separately degree of erosion of tooth blocks in all the soft drinks samples with and without 5% calcium lactate. The paired t-test was used to determine the degree of SL within each group before and after adding 5% calcium lactate. Results: In the present study, PepsiPepsiCo had the highest acidic pH (2.7) and showed the highest degree of erosion with a mean value of 1.55 μ ± 0.07. After adding calcium lactate, the highest acidic pH was shown by AppyFizParle Agro (4.45); however, the degree of erosion was still the highest for Pepsi with a mean value of 1.36 μ ± 0.09. Later, each group was compared for SL among themselves with and without the presence of calcium lactate. AppyFizParleAgro showed the highest degree of erosion with a mean value of 0.22 μ ± 0.08. P ≤ 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Conclusion: The erosive action of soft drinks varies widely. The results demonstrate that the addition of 5% calcium lactate to soft drinks significantly decreased dental erosion