This is Killjoy Week at Hunter-Gatherer. I've railed on the evils of gourmet cupcakes and candy's powerful sway on children. I'd love nothing more than to villify raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens based on health grounds. (Hmmm...both are too sweet?) Okay, so you aren't splurging on cupcakes everyday, you might not have kids, and if you do, Halloween only comes once a year -- why does this matter?
Let's take a look at cavities. There is clear evidence -- archaelogical and anthropological -- showing that hunter-gatherers have dramatically fewer cavities than agriculturalists who came after. Here is data based on skeletons in North America around the transition to agriculture. Before agriculture, fewer than 5% showed signs of a cavity at death. That jumps to over 20% with agriculture (around 500-1,000 A.D. in this case). Remember that these people aren't eating hard candy and Twizzlers, they're primarily adding more grains and grain-products to their diet.
Of course, this is old hat to people in the paleo community, primarily due to the research of
Dr. Weston A. Price, a dentist from Cleveland who traveled the world in the 1930s looking for isolated peoples living their traditional diet. His mangum opus,
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, documented case after case of healthy teeth among people eating their indigenous diet, and those same people ravaged by dental problems as soon as they started eating the White Man's food. Dental problems were one of the worst ongoing health epidemics in the world leading up to regular tooth brushing and fluoride in our water supply not so long ago.
Looking at the pictures below reminds me of those frightening before and after photos of meth addicts. At left, healthy people who eat traditionally. At right, people from the same tribe who eat the White Man's food.
Don't forget to brush your teeth. And beware the White Man's food.
