SUGAR AND DENTAL DISEASE.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3517, 2 July 1920, Page 7

SUGAR AND DENTAL DISEASE.

Article published under the authority j of the Education Department). Examination ha s proved that over <jo per cent, of school children in the Dominion are suffering from dental disease. Experience has proved that this disease is primarily responsible for many others. It is the one disease above all others on which the public should concentrate its attention. It affects almost every member of the community. It begins in childhood. It lowers the health and resisting power of the child and consequently predisposes to tuberculosis and disease generally. It is impossible to exaggerate the - ' suffering and economic loss caused to the community by this apparently trivial but really terrible disease, i Research goes to prove that the use of free "sugar is one of the m6st predominant causes of dental disease. By,

free sugar is meant that not included in the natural composition of fruit and other foods. Dental disease will progress in proportion to the consumption of free sugar. It is the duty ot pat - j cuts, guardians and all who have the interest of the health and economic . welfare of the Dominion at heart to realise this fundamental truth. Thej j should realise that in allowing and j encouraging their children to consume ■ large quantities of sugar in the form, of chocolate and sweets generally they are laying in store for them suffering and ill-health and endangering their,j future welfare. It must he made j clear that the common craving for ] sugar is an acquired one, that chil- j drcn in the past did not get sugar, and that to allow them to develop the eraving is a positive cruelty. Mot only should sugar and distinct- j ]y sugary foods he kept down to a mimimum, but also the eating of sweet biscuits, chocolate and confectionary should he discouraged. These foods consist almost altogether of highly refined starch and sugar which is an . ideal combination for lodging about the teeth. At the same time it does not stimulate but weakens t!ie flow | of saliva. Hence it is not readily j washed out of the crevices, but re- | mains there to undergo acid fernien- j tat ion and destroy the enamel ol the i I teeth. It is not necessarily intended | j to condemn these refined foods absol- j i utsly and banish them entirely from our diet, but rather that their use should be restricted instead of their ‘occupying a prominent place in oiu diet and.being taken at such very frequent intervals. Sugar causes harm in more ways than by its direct action in the mouth and upon the teeth and flow of saliva. 1 When taken in any quantity it causes congestion of the mucous lining of the stomach and leads to catarrh, distmfled nutrition and much vague ill-health. It gives rise in children to that very common and vague ailment mucous disease—which has been aptly termed by an eminent medical authority “the dyspepsia of sweet-eating children." Replacing the excess of sugar and refined starchy foods by more coarsegrained and albuminous foods lends with little other treatment to restore j health. SUGAR UNNECESSARY AND (HARMFUL. Free sugar is not necessary to human health and nutrition. It has only become a common article of diet duriifg comparatively modern times, and only during the last 50 or 100 years ha s its consumption increased to the

present enormous extent. .Three hun- | drccls years ago sugar was a very rare luxu:y, and. was unobtainable except | in an apothecary's shop. During the j seventeen years proceeding .1900 the quantity of sugar consumed in America | rose from nearly lOlbs per head to more than live times that amount. Since that it has increased enormously. ' A similar rapid increase has taken place in England. The consumption of sugar per head in New Zealand for the year 1878 was (M-llbsj in 1913 it was 1221 lbs, nearly twice the amount. This means an average consumption for each indivdual of about l-31b per day. Dental disease in its present magnitude is also comparatively modern, and its increase has been parallel to that of sugar consumption and other modern dietetic errors. In the medical inspection of schools ' a noticeably smaller amount of decay of the teeth has been found to prevail at the smaller out-of-the-way schools. The factor deciding this difference appears to be the absence of sweet ot confectioners’ —shops. Where no such shops are within reach of the school the teeth aie on the average in better condition. The difference is evident between schools only a few miles apart, where one has and the other has not a sweet shop in the, neighbourhood. Sadi shops tire frequently situated only a few doors from schools and trade busily with the children at lunch hour. Apart from their destructive effect upon the teeth, these shops inI rerfeie with the children eating proper lunches. So long as these temptations are there to act upon their childish tastes the inculcation in children of healthy diet habits appears a forlorn hope. When Europeans first came to New Zealand the Maoris ate coarser and more natural food and had perfect teeth. Now the Maori lias adopted •our dietetic habits and his teeth have been reduced to almost the same deplorable state as our own. The Government has inaugurated a scheme to treat dental disease in school children. This can only be regarded as palliative. No real progress can be made unless fundamental causes arc dealt with. For this reason parents are urged, to give their serious consideration to the suggestions given in this and other articles of the series. ! In the next article it is intended to j deal further with the subject of diet, j in relation to the teeth.