Tea for babies?

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32430, 17 October 1970, Page 16

Tea for babies?

Sir, —Mothers should not follow the reported advice of a Lincolnshire medical officer (Dr S. O’Hagen) to "give their babies plenty of tea” to supply fluoride to enable them to grow up “without any major dental troubles." This result is obtainable without any additional fluoride at all. One cup of tea, according to Dr O’Hagen, contains the fluoride equivalent of 12 cups of fluoridated water; but, according to the New Zealand Fluoridation Commissions, it contains the equivalent of between a half cup and 1| cups. Marion F. Harrison’s observations showed that the equivalent of approximately 1} cups of fluoridated water is absorbed daily by New Zealand tea drinkers (1949). There is a definite risk of tannic acid poisoning in babies drinking tea. It would hardly be surprising if any unborn baby subjected to frequent doses of nicotine by its smoking mother, or to frequent doses of caffeine in tea after birth,

were to grow up a confirmed drug addict.—Yours, etc., PAUL MALING. October 2, 1970. [Dr J. M. Louisson, liaison officer of the Medical Association of New Zealand, Canterbury branch, replies: "If the water supply is not fluoridated, it is standard and medically accepted practice that babies should receive half a tablet of fluoride a day up to the age of two (and thereon one tablet a day). If the water is fluoridated, then no action is required by the mother. Medical opinion is in agreement with ytwr correspondent’s contention that it is unnecessary and prob-ably-unwise to supply babies with fluoride by giving them ‘plenty of tea’ as advised by a Lincolnshire medical officer.”]