People have many reasons for drinking bottled water, some are aesthetic - it's a trendy habit; and some are health based - they don't like the taste of tap water or they're squeamish about the number of chemicals in the water. Fluoride has long been added to drinking water to prevent tooth decay, especially in children. However, there are a fair number of opponents to the practice who claim that fluoride is a public health hazard, a toxicant, and responsible for many health problems perhaps even bone cancer in youth.
Now several some people and apparently some dentists are claiming that the reason that there has been a rise in cavities in young children these days is because they are drinking bottled water, not tap water. They suggest adding fluoride to bottled water to give it the protective effect of tap water. Some, but not all the news "reports" are from industry trade groups.
But what about sugar? "Per capita consumption of sugars rose a whopping 28 percent in just 15 years, to 53 teaspoons a day by 1997." Sugar consumption has skyrocketed amoung children and contributes significantly to dental caries as well as diabetes. The Wisconsin Dental Association (WDA) is clear that when teenage boys drink an average of 3 sodas a day and teenage girls drink an average of 2 sodas per day, soda is the root of tooth decay:
"Alarmingly, one 12-ounce can of regular soda contains approximately 40 grams of sugar or the equivalent of 10 teaspoons. Drinking sodas at that rate and constantly bathing teeth in the sugary liquid can cause very rapid deterioration of tooth structure in a very short amount of time"; says one report, and kids with "'previously very healthy mouths'" come in and "'it looks like a bomb went off'"...
However the media seems to disassociate the two trends. Even the American Dental Association seems to make two recommendations: Here, the ADA suggests adding fluoride to water, and here the ADA suggests that consuming sugary drinks constantly -- even for babies -- promotes dental caries.
