FOOD AND BAD TEETH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 206, 1 September 1936, Page 6

FOOD AND BAD TEETH.

It is very disheartening to one of the dental profession to read how lightly certaia members of Parliament treat a problem ■>' of national importance—what the people cat. I am pleased to see that at least twe or three members are genuinely concerned. Only last week we farewelled from our shores a man who has pone right round the world investigating the cause of dental decay and the trail of suffering left in path. Without exception Dr. Price reports that where people live with Nature they are frj'j from dental decay, malformed bones, arthritis, tuberculosis, cancer, etc. He also finds that as the refined and tinned foods of modern civilisation are introduced to the native races, so do the above diseases commence and rapidly increase. He quotes to us an example of the poorest North Auckland Maori children, whose parents send them to school without the usual carbohydrate lunch. These children have excellent teeth, attributable to the fact that they procure a natural lunch of shellfish ar.d crayfish from a neighbouring beach. The teeth of their schoolfellows, whose lunch consists of bread and jam, are rapidly -decaying. Now how much sugar did Nature give* to Xew Zealand? None. The only carbohydrate available to the early Maori was obtained from the kumara and from fern roots. And yet on a diet consisting of sea food and just this small amount of starch the Maoris developed beautiful bodies and jaws and teeth that would put ours to shame. If we go back to the inauguration of the school dental service we find criticism levelled at it by the then world's leading authority on preventive dentistry, Dr. H. P. Pickerill. His words were: "You are tackling' the problem from the wrong end, and you will never get ahead of it." To-day, after fifteen years of patching, the incidence of dental caries in New Zealand shows a marked increase. Dr. Pickerill knew what he was talking about, for he had spent months in the Urewera Country, living among practically uncivilised Maoris, in order to procure data for his book, "Prevention of Dental Caries." Dr. Pickerill at that time advocated making refined sugar subject to high taxation, as a luxury, and more especially did he emphasise the necessity for increased consumption of sea foods, less refined cereal products and fruits. He considered our tea drinking to be excessive and recommended the consumption of more light ale a,3 a salivary stimulant. I make these remarks as a practising dentist deeply concerned-with the health of New Zealanders, which is being undermined by dental caries to a greater extent than by any. other disease. E. P. HYLTON NASH.