Addiction To Sweets

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30740, 3 May 1965, Page 1

Addiction To Sweets

GV Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, May 2. Parents who give their children sweets are likely to start them on a addiction comparable with cigarette smoking in grown-ups.

If given the sweet-eating habit at an early age they will continue to crave for sugar, and the result will probably be serious damage to their teeth.

Dr. Richard R- Stephens, head of the department of children s dentistry at the Institute of Dental Surgery, Lon,<N

don, said this in- Auckland yesterday when he arrived for a lecture at the invitation of the Dental Association.

“If you don’t give a child sweets he will never miss them,” said Dr. Stephens. “There are many other ways of rewarding or pleasing a child, by giving him a small toy, book, or coppers to buy a comic.

“If it is explained to him early that sweets are bad for his teeth he will accept this and will soon think other children are stupid for eatin'g them.

“if you must give your child sweets,” said Dr. Stephens, “avoid long-lasting lollipops and boiled sweets and go for chocolate or some-

thing that can be got rid of quickly, and give it to him preferably at night before he eleans his teeth and goes to bed."

Dr. Stephens extends the sweetness ban to such things as heavily-sugared milk for babies, rosehip syrup and blackcurrant drinks. Children would get enough vitamins C and D without the concentrates, whose glucose content could damage their teeth, he said. Dr. Stephens said one really fundamental cause of caries was still obscure, but until it was found the “old rules” of tooth hygiene should be observed. Sugar consumption kept down and fluoridation of water adopted.