Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Eliminating Sugary Drinks Can Reduce Tooth Decay



Well, DUH.

But, we now have a study in a controlled population of American Indians that verfies what every dentist and most American parents know: sugary drinls, including soda are very bad for your teeth.
A study conducted in four American Indian communities in the Pacific Northwest presents an effective strategy to convince mothers to switch young children from drinking sweetened soda to water and shows that eliminating these sugary drinks from the diets of the youngest members of the tribe significantly decreased tooth decay.

The results of the dental arm of "The Toddler Overweight and Tooth Decay Prevention Study" (TOTS), which targeted American Indians from birth to 30 months of age, appear in the current issue (Volume 20, Number 4) of the peer reviewed journal Ethnicity & Disease.
The abstract of the study is here (Pdf).

Of course, I find it incomprehensible that some public schools continue to have these soft drink (soda) machines available to their students. Of course, the schools justify them by accepting the monetary donations from the companies making the drinks.

Parents if you want your children to have good teeth and fewer problems throughout their lives, limit the sugary drinks, OK?

No comments:

Post a Comment