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Comment by oifjsidjf | Hacker News Reader

If you read Weston Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration you will see that many tribes have PERFECT teeth without even flossing.

Tooth decay is purely caused by diet.

Certain grains also cause it, not only sugar.

Rice for example is very bad for teeth (90% of people damaged teeth, acidic starch is what they assume), while potatoes are much less harmful (~10% if I remember correctly, since potato starch is alkaline).

Sodas (anything with low ph) is terrible for the teeths as it seems.

So it's also not "just carbs", but there are other factors.

So "painting teeth" with dubious chemicals is moronic since the problem is the food. If the food destroys your teeth so much, think what it does on the inside of you which you cannot see.

Eg check out this study: TOOTH DECAY IN RELATION TO DIET AND GENERAL HEALTH NILS P. LARSEN, M.D

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> If the food destroys your teeth so much, think what it does on the inside of you which you cannot see.

I was with you until this point. The stomach is highly acidic. The natural next step food takes in our bodies is into an environment that would destroy our teeth. It does not necessarily follow that food which damages our teeth is bad for the rest of us. If anything, your potato/rice examples would suggest that the opposite is true.

I agree tooth decay is largely a result of our diet, but that doesn't mean we have to change our diet to reverse/prevent tooth decay. I have a garbage diet and still manage to keep my teeth okay. I'm not in a rush to overhaul how I interact with food.

You still need this stuff while people's diets change, though - diets generally have a good amount of cultural, religious, and family ties and it takes time.

Then there is the entire issue of trying to change the diets of poor people at a time when places (like the US) aren't even making sure the folks at the bottom can get enough calories and nutrients nor are we making sure diabetics and others have a diet fit for them, let alone trying to make sure folks aren't eating badly for their teeth.

And I'm sure I'm not considering things like changing the crops being planted and things like that.

But we have this stuff, perhaps. It isn't moronic considering we probably aren't going to change diets suddenly.

Price didn't believe that carbs or grains caused tooth decay: he prescribed freshly ground grains for the diet.

Price's book is compelling evidence that something in modern societies causes tooth decay, which is unnatural.

Price's hypothesis was that it was caused by the change to the modern diet and its lack of nutrients. So white flour bad, freshly ground whole grain good. Refined sugar, which Americans still eat ~80 pounds of a year creates a nutritional deficit that is hard to over come since the rest of our diet is not nutrient dense.

I don't believe in rice causing bad teeth either. I live in Asia and almost all of my grandparents and great-grandparents have good teeth, and we only eat rice here. The ones who have bad teeth are, unsurprisingly, heavy smokers or drinkers.

After I had been on an all meat diet for a year I went to the dentist for a cleaning and the dentist called someone over to show them my gums, which were apparently unusually healthy.

Potatoes are not alkaline. Potatoes and rice are close in ph and on the acidic to neutral side. The average pH of baked potatoes is around 6.0 to 7.0, while the average pH of cooked rice is around 6.0 to 6.5.

(7 is neutral, and values above 7 move toward alkalinity.)

Yeah but maybe unwinding 10,000 years of agriculture isn't very feasible.

> So "painting teeth" with dubious chemicals is moronic since the problem is the food.

This is a pretty bold claim to make -- given the reality of American diets, do you think there's a better option? Especially in healthcare (and especially with $$$ American healthcare) you have to balance the perfect solution with meeting people where they are.

It's also easy to say when you have the money to buy grass fed beef and other high quality food sources which I suspect most HN peeps have the income for. It's a lot like saying "let them eat cake if they're starving"

> So "painting teeth" with dubious chemicals is moronic since the problem is the food.

Moronic! Why do this simple intervention when we could simply get everyone to completely change their diets, removing every staple food their family has been cooking with for generations? Obviously the latter is much more practical.

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