Hope you like Jell-O, because you’re going to be eating a lot of it.
I had one of my wisdom teeth pulled last year. It was first time I’ve ever had to have that kind of procedure, though the operation itself wasn’t that bad. The annoying part came afterward, when I needed to be hyper-vigilant about keeping my mouth clean and safe while it recovers from the process. The good news is that, unlike some procedures I could mention, you can still eat stuff after having a tooth pulled out of your head. The bad news is that the list of stuff you can eat is somewhat short.
When stocking up on post-removal foods, the name of the game is “soft.” Any food you get should require very little-to-no chewing at all. Even if you only had one tooth pulled on one side of your mouth, you still want to keep chewing to a minimum, lest you irritate the removal site, or worse, pop your stitches. As such, common staples of post-removal diets include things like Jell-O, pudding, bone broths, and smoothies.
Bone broths and smoothies, in particular, are probably the best choices, as they are both somewhat filling and nutritious, though they do carry a couple of risks. For broths, you want to make sure there’s nothing spicy in there like hot pepper flakes. Spicy foods will irritate the heck out of your removal site. Smoothies should be as smooth as possible, and shouldn’t include super-seedy fruits like strawberries. Small particles like seeds could potentially get stuck in the hole and cause it to heal improperly.
You should stick to soft and liquid foods for at least a couple of days after the extraction. After that, it should be safe to start chewing stuff again, though you should try to keep food away from the side of your mouth where the tooth was pulled. You’ll probably be prescribed some antibiotics to prevent infection, which is actually another reason to drink smoothies with yogurt; antibiotics will lessen your body’s bacteria, while probiotics will only restore the good bacteria. It’s a win-win.
