If you don’t think that brushing your teeth and flossing after every meal is enough to protect your teeth from cavities, try drinking red wine, reports Prevention.com.

In a new study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers grew several cultures of bacteria responsible for causing dental diseases and dipped them into different solutions including red wine, red wine without alcohol, red wine spiked with grape seed extract, and water with 12 percent ethanol.

Results showed that red wine, with or without the alcohol, and wine with grape seed extract, proved to be the most effective at killing the bacteria. Of course, this is not to say that drinking red wine is enough. You still need to be conscientious about your dental health, and visit your dentist twice a year.

(Photo by boo lee via Flickr Creative Commons)