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Comment by NotGMan | Hacker News Reader

The problem is food. Stop eating many carbs and no more tooth problems.

Trying to solve tooth rot with flouride is stupid because it misses the point: flouride doesn't help much: people still get tooth rot.

So basicaly if you flouridate water you get tooth rot + you ingest a neurotoxins.

Stop eating trash food and you won't get rotten teeth + no neurotoxin will be ingested!

People who will comment in the likes of "yeah but people won't change their diets": I agree, they won't. But I don't want to get neurotoxin put into my water because other people are fine with poisoning their children with trash food.

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> flouride doesn't help much: people still get tooth rot

Source? I've not heard the efficacy of fluoride debated, just it's toxicity.

Well if flouride would be efficient enough, there wouldn't be so many dentists around. What source do you need for that?

There are many oral health problems that flouride does not solve.

I hope you're joking. This applies "efficient enough" is 100% effective and tooth decay is the only reason for dentists. The vast majority of my dental visits have been unrelated to cavities, and the studies I've seen quote 25% efficacy, which I'd hope you'd agree isn't "no effect!"

sorry I was not joking. If flouride (also in toothpaste) would be enough to stop the typical tooth decay with the current habits of eating sugar, soda etc., well then fine.

But it is not enough. However I believe that stopping sugar, soda, bread etc. would be enough. In that case, the fluoride neurotoxin would not be necessary anymore.

I don't disagree. Sugar isn't a harmless chemical either! It's significantly worse than fluoride at the quantities we consume. The problem is how to actually do something about it.

Adding fluoride to water is insanely effective for how easy it is. The 70% of Americans who drink fluorinated water get a free 25% reduction in cavities without active involvement.

What would it take to see a similar impact from sugar reduction? I can pretty much guarantee it won't be voluntary! I assume you're going to need to start by making Coke illegal, stop subsidizing corn syrup, ban most fast food and restaurant chains, and retool many of our factories.

But that sounds like political suicide, and we haven't even attempted it despite the growing mountain of evidence to the harms of sugar.

Yes indeed I can choose to avoid it at the individual level. Then I at least don’t want to be forced toxic water upon me.

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