Editorial · PetScored desk · June 9, 2026
Do dental chews actually work?
You are standing in the treat aisle, and almost every chew on the shelf promises cleaner teeth. Here is the part that should annoy you: most of those promises have nothing behind them. There is exactly one signal that separates a chew that was actually tested from one that just printed the words, and once you know what to look for, the whole aisle reads differently.
Why “helps clean teeth” means so little
Here is why that line is everywhere. Periodontal disease, the gum infection that builds up over years, 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, and 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 that same line. Standing in the store, you have no way to tell which one ran an actual study and which one just liked how the words sounded.
That gap is exactly what the Veterinary Oral Health Council fills, and it is the thing worth knowing. The VOHC is an independent board that reviews submitted data against a standardized protocol for reducing plaque and tartar. A product that clears the bar earns a Seal of Acceptance for that specific claim. It is not a government regulator and it is not a guarantee for your pet, but it is the only widely recognized signal you can spot on a bag that a dental claim was tested rather than just asserted.
What a chew is actually doing in there
When a chew does work, two things are happening. The first is mechanical: a chew with the right texture and size drags across the tooth and scrapes off soft plaque before it hardens into tartar. That is why size matters so much, and why a chew your dog swallows in two bites does nothing for its teeth. The second is chemical: some chews carry an active ingredient, such as delmopinol or a polyphosphate, that interferes with how plaque and tartar form in the first place. The OraVet chews in our catalog use delmopinol; several seal-backed chews use a sodium-tripolyphosphate coating.
The catch is that both only touch the surfaces a chew can reach, mostly the outer faces of the big cheek teeth. Neither one gets below the gumline, which is where the disease that actually matters lives. That is the honest ceiling on what any chew can do for you, and it is the reason the VOHC claim is specifically about plaque and tartar, never about treating periodontal disease.
How the seal reshuffles the shelf
In our rubric, a dental claim earns full Claim Honesty credit only when the exact product line is on the VOHC Accepted Products list, and a dental claim with no seal behind it takes a penalty. That one rule moves a surprising number of products you probably recognize. The standard US Pedigree Dentastix Original daily stick is not on the list, even though the Advanced line is, so the box you grab matters. Milk-Bone’s Brushing Chews are accepted; its Flavor Snacks biscuits, which also tell you 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.
So a seal-backed chew can outrank a cheaper, more popular one purely on claim honesty. But it cuts the other way too, and this is the part the seal alone will not tell you: 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 land in the middle of our ranking rather than the top. The seal answers one question for you, “does the dental claim hold up,” and we score the other four dimensions on their own.
What a chew can’t do for you
Keep a chew in its lane and it earns its keep. A dental chew is a supplement to brushing, not a substitute for it: daily brushing is still the gold standard for plaque control, because it reaches surfaces a chew never will. A chew is also not a treatment. If your pet already has tartar buildup, gingivitis, or periodontal disease, that calls for a veterinary cleaning, not a snack. And remember that a chew is still a treat. Its calories count against the daily total, and the hard ones carry a real population-level risk of tooth fracture, so factor that in before you reach for the toughest one on the shelf.
- The PetScored desk. Want to skip the guesswork? See the chews that actually carry a seal in our best VOHC-accepted dental chews list, and read the full rules in the treats methodology.