[spicyusername]

What is there to prove...?

If the goal of toothbrushing and flossing is to remove bacteria and food debris from your mouth, hopefully an uncontroversial premise, it's pretty obvious how flossing helps.

Just flossing and carefully watching the action of the floss and the plaque is sufficient to demonstrate the benefit.

Sometimes your common sense is more than enough to make sense of the world, no ivy league double blind study required.

[shard]

It's a question of return on investment. If spending the extra minute everyday saves a probable $10k over your lifetime due to dental work, then yes it might be worth it. But if it saves a probable $10, it might not.

[spicyusername]

The cost of the dental work pales in comparison to the value of keeping your natural teeth, which is going to be much much much higher than $10k over your lifetime.

[kodt]

Not flossing makes your dental visits longer as they scrape off all the plaque from in-between your teeth. Just avoiding that discomfort is worth it IMO.

I suppose you could skip going to the dentist altogether but that comes with risks of larger issues down the road.