Page 7 Advertisements Column 3

Waikato Independent, Volume XX, Issue 2275, 3 July 1920, Page 7

SUGAR AND DENTAL DISEASE (Article Published under the authority of the Enducation Department.) Examination has proved that over 90 per cent, of school children in ■ the Dominion arc 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. Its affects almost eevery 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 exag- j gerqte the suffering and economic loss caused to the community by this' apparently trivial but really terrible disease. Research goes to prove that the use of free sugar is one of the most 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 of parents, guardians and all who have the interest of the health and economic welfare of the Dominion at heart to realise this funtamcntal truth. They should realise that in allowing and 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 future welfare. It must be made clear that the common craving for sugar is an acquired one, that children in the past did not get suar, and that gto allow them to develop the craving is a positive cruelty. Not only should sugar and distinctly sugary foods be kept down to a minimum, but also the eating of sweet biscuits, chocolate and confectionery should be 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 docs not stimulate but weakens the flow of saliva. Hence it is not readily washed out of the crevices, but remains there to undergo acid fermentation and destroy the enamel of the teeth. It is not necessarily intended’ to condemn these refined foods absolutely and banish them entirely from our diet, but rather that their use should be restricted instead of their occupying a prominent place in our diet and being taken at such very frequent intervals. SVigar causes harm in more ways than by its direct action in the mouth and upon the teeth and flow of saliva. When taken in any quantity it causes congestion of the kucous lining of the stomach and loads to catarrh, disturb 1 ed 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 a,u thority “the dyspepsia of sweet-eating children.” Replacing the excess of sugar and refined starchy foods by more coarsegrained and albuminous foods tends with little other treatment to restore health.

Sugar Unnecessary and Harmful. Free sugar is not necessary to human health and nutrition. It has only becomc* a common article of diet during comparatively modern times, and only during the last 50 or 100 years has'its consumption increased to the present enormous extent. Three hundred years ago sugar was a very rare luxury, and was unobtainable except in an apothecary's shop. During the 17 years preceding 1900 \jthc quantity of sugar consumed in America rose from nearly 10 lbs' per head to more than five times that amount. Since that it has incrcas cd onormousy. A similar rapid increase has taken place in .England. The consumption of sugar per head in New Zealand for the year 1878 was 641-lbs; in 19.13 it was 1221 lbs, nearly twice the amount. This means an average consumption for each individual of about one-third lb. per day. Dental disease in its present magnitude is also comparatively modern, and its in-, crease has been parallel to that of sugar consumption and other modern dietetic errors 1 . 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 bo the absence of sweet —or confectioners'—shops. Where no such shops arc within roach of the school the teeth arc on the average in bettor condition. The difference is evident, between only a few miles apart where one has and the other has not ■a sweet shop in the neighbourhood. .Such shops arc 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 interfere Avith the children eating proper lunches. So long as these temptations are there to act upon their childish tastes the inculcation in children of healthy dietetic habits appears a forlorn hope.