Diet and Dental Caries

Diet is vital to human development, growth, and health maintenance. The patient’s nutrition and dental caries activity are related. From nutrition view point, dental caries is widely accepted as being caused by the ingestion of fermentable carbohydrates, particularly sucrose. The response to sugars is modified by other factors such as exposure to fluoride, oral hygiene practices, and salivary flow rate and composition. Risk of caries can be minimized by good oral hygiene, appropriate exposure to fluoride and by restricting the intake sugar containing snacks between meals to no more than four occasions per day. Consumption of foods with cariostatic properties, that are also healthy in terms of diet like milk, cheese and unrefined plant foods, should be encouraged.
This book summarizes how the diet is related to oral health and reviews in detail about the association between nutrition and dental caries, and also dietary recommendations for its prevention.