Are any of the alternative means of reducing tooth decay especially useful to low-income earners?
A daily dose of several mg of fluoride per day is certainly not necessary for life, since most of the world’s population lives with much lower intakes. But, is it essential for sound teeth? Before taking up Western type diets, which are high in sugars, people in the Third World (and Australian Aborigines) generally had very low levels of tooth decay. Most of these peoples also had levels of fluoride in their drinking water typically below one-fifth or one-tenth the level of about 1 ppm recommended by the proponents of fluoridation. Tooth decay was also low in Britain and continental Europe during World War II, when sugar was a scarce commodity,(16) and in the 1950s at the Hopewood orphanage, near Bowral NSW Australia, where the children were fed on wholemeal bread and other “whole” foods.(17) In Britain, continental Europe and Bowral, there was no fluoridation during those times. So, people can have excellent teeth without 1 ppm fluoride in drinking water. Conversely, it is also true t
