Editorial · PetScored desk · June 9, 2026
Do dental chews actually work?
Walk the treat aisle and almost every chew promises cleaner teeth. Most of those promises have nothing behind them. There is exactly one signal that separates a tested dental claim from a marketing one, and once you know it, the aisle looks different.
The problem: “helps clean teeth” is not a regulated claim
Periodontal disease is the most common diagnosed condition in adult dogs and cats, so “cleans teeth” is one of the most valuable things a treat can put on the bag. It is also one of the least policed. A crunchy biscuit, an antler, a rawhide twist, and a purpose-built dental chew can all print some version of the same line, and most buyers have no way to tell which one ran a study and which one just printed the words.
That is the gap the Veterinary Oral Health Council fills. The VOHC is an independent board that reviews submitted data against a standardized protocol for reducing plaque and tartar. A product that meets the threshold earns a Seal of Acceptance for that specific claim. It is not a government regulator and it is not a guarantee for an individual pet, but it is the only widely recognized, consumer-facing evidence signal that a dental claim was tested rather than asserted.
How a chew actually reduces plaque
Two mechanisms do the work. The first is mechanical: a chew with the right texture and size drags across the tooth surface and scrapes soft plaque before it mineralizes into tartar. That is why size matters, and why a chew swallowed in two bites does nothing. The second is chemical: some chews carry an active ingredient, such as delmopinol or a polyphosphate, that interferes with how plaque and tartar form. The OraVet chews in our catalog use delmopinol; several seal-backed chews use a sodium-tripolyphosphate coating.
Both mechanisms work on the surfaces a chew can reach, mostly the outer faces of the big cheek teeth. Neither reaches below the gumline, where the disease that matters most lives. That is the honest ceiling on what any chew can do, and it is why the VOHC claim is specifically about plaque and tartar, not about treating periodontal disease.
How the seal reorders the aisle
Our treats rubric gives a dental claim full Claim Honesty credit only when the exact product line is on the VOHC Accepted Products list, and it applies a penalty to a dental claim that has no seal behind it. That one rule moves a lot of popular products. The standard US Pedigree Dentastix Original daily stick is not on the list, even though the Advanced line is. Milk-Bone’s Brushing Chews are accepted; its Flavor Snacks biscuits, which also say the crunchy texture helps clean teeth, are not. Antlers, bully sticks, cow ears, and rawhide chews routinely claim “dental health” and none of them are VOHC-accepted.
The result is that a seal-backed chew can outrank a cheaper, more popular one purely on claim honesty. It also cuts the other way: a VOHC seal does not make a chew clean. A seal-backed dental chew can still run on chicken by-product meal and be preserved with BHA and BHT, which is why some accepted chews sit in the middle of our ranking rather than the top. The seal answers one question, “does the dental claim hold up,” and our rubric scores the other four dimensions independently.
What a chew is not
A dental chew is a supplement to brushing, not a substitute for it. Daily brushing remains the gold standard for plaque control because it reaches surfaces a chew cannot. A chew is also not a treatment: if a pet already has tartar buildup, gingivitis, or periodontal disease, that is a veterinary cleaning, not a snack. And every chew is still a treat, with calories that count against the daily total and, for the hard ones, a real population-level risk of tooth fracture.
- The PetScored desk. See the chews that actually carry a seal in our best VOHC-accepted dental chews list, and the full rules in the treats methodology.