the history of dentures is absolutely fascinating. Oh, OK it isn’t but there are a few salient points that you may be unfamiliar with.

replacements for decayed or lost teeth have been produced for thousands of years. The Etruscans made skilfully designed false teeth out of ivory and bone, secured by gold bridgework, as early as 700 B.C. unfortunately, this level of sophistication for false teeth was not regained until the 1800s.

during medieval times, the practice of dentistry was largely confined to tooth extraction; replacement was seldom considered. when false teeth were installed, they were hand-carved and tied in place with silk threads & if not enough natural teeth remained, anchoring false ones was difficult. people who wore full sets of dentures had to remove them when they wanted to eat which is rather a weird concept in itself. upper and lower plates were fitted poorly and were held together with steel springs; disconcertingly, the set of teeth could spring suddenly out of the wearer's mouth. now that must have been a bundle of laughs!

since antiquity, the most common material for false teeth was animal bone or ivory, especially from elephants or hippos (no-one we know obviously). human teeth were also used, pulled from the dead or sold by poor people from their own mouths.

you may have perceived by now that a new kind of denture is most urgently required. I propose that our dentists make a precise mould for our new teeth which is forwarded to our chosen confectionery processing plant that makes up a batch of, say 100 edible sets of teeth at a time. these packs may last us a couple of months. the producer holds our mould on file for repeat orders until such a time as we desire a new moulding as the shape of the mouth changes.

now with these new kinds of dentures, at the end of the day, instead of removing them to soak in a glass overnight, we just eat them for supper or if we are taken by hunger during the day, say in the train or at the office, we just snack on some or all of our teeth. I am thinking along the lines of say a firmish jelly for the gums and a little white (possibly not) shiny boiled sweet for the teeth themselves. Yum yum.
-- po, May 26 2002

Gummi Teeth http://www.candywar...m/gumteet3kgba.html
Only $6.54 per kilogram. [mighty_cheese, May 26 2002, last modified Oct 05 2004]

Chicklets?
-- phoenix, May 26 2002


Gummi teeth are available at most local dépanneurs and bulk food shops. I have doubts as to the effectiveness as chewing implements, though.
-- mighty_cheese, May 26 2002


Eat Ice Cream Entrées, silly
-- thumbwax, May 26 2002


Fun idea. Choose from among many styles--horse teeth, tiny teeth, Bubba teeth, pointy teeth--then eat them. Take bites and they crumble and break, then smile and break them some more! For smiling and speaking only, you'd put in a proper set for eating. The advantages of not having natural teeth should be recognized and enhanced.
-- entremanure, May 27 2002


‘Hilarious’ joke falsies could be made out of rock salt.
-- reensure, May 27 2002


Maybe as candy. I don't think they're a good idea for actual use though.
-- Chris38183, May 27 2002


Great idea, but I can see some problems with chewing these teeth, but this can probably be solved, by making them the disposable type,then you would be able to eat the used up pair with the new pair you are putting in, I think it's a really cleaver idea, but it needs a little work.
-- smartnut, Mar 13 2003


Good idea, po. Small stumbling block, though: either the edible teeth have to be so soft that they're useless for eating things, or they have to be so hard that you can't actually eat them without any teeth.

I had to have one of my back teeth (back tooths?) removed a while back - I find that many sweets (candies, for the americans amongst us) fall into that gap and try to masquerade as tooths for a while. In my experience, fragments of Polo mints have the best chewing power, but they do tend to lend a slightly minty flavour to whatever it is you're eating.

Maybe I should brush more often. Not just the teeth, but also the gaps.
-- lostdog, Mar 13 2003


//21st millennia// Did I doze off?
-- half, Mar 13 2003


i lost two tiny pieces from an upper left molar last week. I'm praying it was just part of a filling. I don't need to be losing my teeth at my age. Maybe I'll be in the market for some of these soon.
-- sambwiches, Mar 13 2003


To eat them, grind them against each other. The insides can dissolve easily in saliva. The pieces of the outside may be more of a problem.
-- caspian, Jan 06 2005



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