TEETH AND DIET

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 September 1939, Page 11

TEETH AND DIET

OPINIONS OF DENTISTS. PRICE OF DENTAL DECAY. Australians spent £5,000,000 last year on lollies and £7,000,000 on cakes and biscuits, said Mr Harley Kennan in an address to delegates to the Dental Congress in Melbourne recently. The congress is being attended by dentists from all Australian States, New Zealand, Great Britain, the United States and the Netherland Indies.

Mr Kennan said that great sums would have been better spent on food which was good for the. teeth. Dental decay was largely attributable to the very great increase of the starch content of modern diet. He suggested that people should eat wholemeal instead of white bread, eliminate cakes and biscuits, and derive their sugar as much as possible from natural products, such as honey. People now consumed ten times as much “artificial” sugar as they did 100 years ago, declared Mr Kennan. Most of it was highly refined sugar, which was virtually a chemical substance. As other diet aids to good teeth, Mr Kennan advocated hard foods, which were a stimulant, and cleansing foods, such as celery and carrots.

In a debate on the causes of dental decay, many interesting views were advanced. Dr. V. T. Sealey declared that the reckless use of the tooth-brush could be a source of tremendous danger to the teeth. Such use caused painful erosion of the teeth near the gums. Some modification of tooth-brush design was necessary, he said, and people should be instructed in the proper use of tooth-brushes so that destruction by pyorrhoea could be prevented. Dr. C. D. Hearman suggested that the cleaning of teeth, no matter how regularly, did not necessarily prevent ‘ decay. Too much attention was paid to highly refined foods from which the valuable vitamin El had been extracted. White flour and sugar products were foods very readily prone to ferment and produce acid that also created “softness” in the mouth, prevented' the free flow of saliva and deprived the teeth and jaws of the stimulus necessary to their normal functioning. The president of the congress, Dr., J. Honahan Lewis, urged an intensive educational campaign to reduce the incidence of dental decay. He said that dental disease was responsible for more than 60 per cent of the illhesses among 7 the industrial classes in Great Britain, and there was no reason to doubt that this applied equally in Australia.