Amazonian delicacy tucupi is as erosive as a cola-based soft drink

• Increasing prevalence of tooth erosion is strongly related to acidic diets.
• Tucupi, a low-pH Amazonian delicacy, largely figures in such population diet.
• Tucupi’s ability to promote erosion of bovine enamel was assessed.
• Response variable was bovine enamel percentage of surface microhardness change.
• Tucupi is as erosive as a cola-based soft drink.

ObjectiveAcidic diets are advocated as main risk factor for tooth erosion, which could be prevented, or at least controlled, if patients were early advised. It is important to identify, hence, if possible dietary constituents regionally consumed on large scale, such as tucupi, a low-pH yellowish-green color and strong flavor delicacy made from the juice of a bitter cassava, may explain its occurrence in specific patient groups. This cross-over in situ/ex vivo study evaluated tucupi's ability to promote erosion of bovine enamel by assessing its percentage of surface microhardness change (%SMHC), taking a cola-based soft drink and human saliva as positive and negative controls.DesignFor three 7-days spaced out legs of 7 days each, nine volunteers wore palatal devices with three bovine enamel blocks, which were challenged with one of the following solutions: TUC—tucupi (n = 27); COL—cola-based soft drink (n = 27); SAL—saliva (n = 27). Erosive challenges were performed extra-orally (4×/day) by dropping TUC or COL at room temperature on specimens. After 5 min, palatal devices were replaced into the mouth. SAL permanently acted as the negative control while volunteers solely wore the device. One-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s post-hoc tests (α = 0.05) were applied.ResultsTUC promoted an enamel %SMHC (−21.56 ± 10.08a) similar than that promoted by COL (−18.19 ± 12.99a; p = 0.275), which were both significantly higher than that promoted by SAL (−1.86 ± 13.65b; p < 0.0001).ConclusionsBesides the most worldwide appreciated cola-based soft drink, the greatly consumed Amazonian delicacy tucupi can be considered a potential risk factor for tooth erosion.