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DecentChanceOfLousy t1_ivbc3az wrote

The "private interests" mentioned in the abstract are... dental associations.

>A dental organization was among the first to initiate the public health recommendations which started fluoride-supplemented high-carbohydrate nutritional guidelines.

Note the verbal trickery there: before that, people just had high-carbohydrate nutritional guidelines. It was only after dentists recommended fluoride that it became a fluoride-supplemented high-carbohydrate guidelines. Before that their teeth just rotted.

While it's not really disputed that the sugar lobby is both well recognized and responsible for a lot of terrible public health recommendations, this isn't the issue here. This paper seems like it was written just for the headline.

"Fluoride isn't helpful if you eat a low carbohydrate diet" is true. But that doesn't change the fact that most people eat a high carbohydrate diet, so topical fluoride is helpful for them. "Don't eat sugary foods, drink soda, or other such nonsense" is already standard advice when you go to the dentist. People just don't follow it.

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L7Death t1_ivdwy2r wrote

Maybe you should actually read the full article or at least the second section.

Because it really seems like you didn't.

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DecentChanceOfLousy t1_ive4gz3 wrote

The entire second section is about sugar/grain lobby shenanigans that took place decades after public officials started recommending fluoride (1961 and 1979/1986/1994 for American Heart Association and American Diabetes Association recommendations vs. 1940s for fluoridation recommendations). The diet recommendation reversals came more than a decade after fluoridation became public policy in the US, but they're presented first as an attempt to confuse the order of events for the reader.

I read the article. It's... not good. It relies on semantic trickery and intentional obfuscation to make its points. The parts that aren't nonsense ("sugar is terrible for your teeth/heart/diabetes", "fluoride would be less necessary if it weren't for excess sugar in popular foods", the actual record of events, etc.) are neither novel nor disputed.

Regardless, this belongs on /r/history, rather than /r/science. It's literally just a historical study citing snippets from other books and paper about events 50 years in the past, with 0 original research.

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L7Death t1_ivhsrmc wrote

So it's not just "dental associations".

Cool.

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