[KingMachiavelli]

I would try this in a heartbeat, cavities IME seem to be mostly genetic or per-person microbiome environmental thing. The fact that without daily maintenance our teeth can just rot away to a point where severe infection and/or death seems just like a major flaw we should be trying a lot harder to fix.

[cmrdporcupine]

It's a flaw with an agrarian diet, not intrinsic to human anatomy. Archaeological remains of hunter-gatherers show extremely few cavities. They begin in earnest once people start eating domesticated cereal grains as a primary food source.

[KingMachiavelli]

> It's a flaw with an agrarian diet, not intrinsic to human anatomy.

We don't accept anthropological arguments for any more human anatomy limitations. We have contacts and glasses to correct our eyes and cars and planes to travel farther and faster then we ever could on our legs alone.

I just think compared to the other recurring hygiene tasks, teeth seem to be the most labor intensive and accumulate damage continuously while most other hygiene tasks can be technically be ignored for days/weeks (like camping with no shower).

[bawolff]

Are these really good counter examples - they all have common explanations of this sort (whether or not true idk)? We have glasses because modern society requires focusing on close objects like books and screens causing eye strain. Cars are great for modern society but pretty poor and hunting an animal in the middle of a forest, etc.

While i doubt its the only factor, diets higher in sugar than what hunter/gathers would have eaten seems plausibly linked to there being more cavities in modern times.

[midoridensha]

>We have glasses because modern society requires focusing on close objects like books and screens causing eye strain.

This doesn't make sense. This only explains why people use reading glasses or bifocals over the age of 40.

Most people needing vision correction are near-sighted (myopia), not far-sighted (hyperopia). We have glasses because we need to be able to see things and read signs at distances greater than our arm reach.

There's something else going on causing SO many people to need vision correction.

>Cars are great for modern society

As someone who lives in a walkable city with excellent public transit, I completely disagree. Cars are a disaster and a cancer on society.

>While i doubt its the only factor, diets higher in sugar than what hunter/gathers would have eaten seems plausibly linked to there being more cavities in modern times.

I think this is a big thing, though I think it's more complicated because some people eat plenty of sugar and still don't have cavities, so I think sugar affects different peoples' bacteria differently, or different people have someone acquired or evolved different bacteria that respond differently to sugars. But yeah, sugar seems to be a central issue.

[doubleg72]

I would argue it is more to do with the amount of sugars and the frequency these sugars are in contact with the teeth than anything. Sipping HFCS the entire day seems to be much more common these days..

[ClumsyPilot]

> Cars are great for modern society

They are the sole reason children can't play ousude like they did 50 years ago and like 2nd biggest cause of climate change.

Absolutely teerible for society.

[jamilton]

They're good counterexamples in they show solutions of the form "use technology" can work instead of "change the root behavior".

[ImHereToVote]

It's amazing how much your vision improves by simply focusing at the edge of your eye resolution level. Don't squint, just focus. A month later you will be blown away.

[IIsi50MHz]

This becomes difficult for someone whose eyes are mismatched.

Would practicing with one eye properly covered, to have low enough lux to prevent the natural feedback mechanism which causes myopia[1], seem impractical?

[1] Extended or frequent exposure to low-contrast input causes lengthening of the eye, and can be irreversible after two weeks[2]. Seems to involve eye and visual cortex, and to not occur if the eye has no connection to the visual cortex. I'm not aware of any similar mechanism to account for far-sightedness.

[2] Consequently, nightlights and other light sources which shine into a sleeping area may be counter-indicated.

[themitigating]

Fruit?

[littlestymaar]

> We have contacts and glasses to correct our eyes and cars and planes to travel farther and faster then we ever could on our legs alone.

And we have toothbrushes…

[ch4s3]

It seems like modern hunter gatherers get cavities[1].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5351833/

[gregwebs]

Modern hunter gatherers are a lot more modern than one might imagine. Usually wearing T-shirts and sometimes, as in this case smoking cigarettes. Their diet is different in many ways than hunter gatherers of the past, along with many other parts of their lifestyle. It’s probably a good demonstration of the “Paleo fantasy“- if these groups that are still playing by some of the hunter gatherer groups are getting very different results on these important markers, then we are likely to as well when we try to incorporate parts of the hunter gather diet or lifestyle into our very different lives.

[ch4s3]

> Their diet is different in many ways than hunter gatherers of the past

There was no single diet of hunter gatherers in the past.

[mlyle]

Yes, and these guys are different from all of 'em.

[gregwebs]

Mostly fresh food- eating things they day they were picked or killed as the default. But generally in an environment of abundance with generational wisdom about what is nutrient dense. The group in the study may be eating lots of honey because they are more marginalized today by territorial pressure and others hunting and hunting restrictions, etc.

[cmrdporcupine]

"The unexpected discovery of high caries incidences for men in the bush is likely explained by heavy reliance on honey, and perhaps differential access to tobacco and marijuana. "

I'd also expect a high fruit diet in certain tropical regions where fruit is available more constantly also shows similar effects.

[ch4s3]

Access to and a cultural appreciation for honey probably plays/ed a factor in some societies.

[fsckboy]

you think honey appreciation is cultural? that's ... sweet, my sweet summer honeychild.

[ch4s3]

> sweet, my sweet summer honeychild

I think we can maybe all move on from this awful quote.

But, no I'm specifically referring to cultures like the Efé where men gather honey full time during a season, Yao honey-hunters who work with birds to find honey, or other forest cultures where honey is gathered from especially tall trees as a show of masculinity and bravery.

[thaumasiotes]

> Archaeological remains of hunter-gatherers show extremely few cavities.

How long did they live before becoming remains?

[cmrdporcupine]

Not long, but actually longer than the first agricultural societies is my understanding. With the agrarian transition, population density and family sizes went up (a lot) but life expectancy went down a bit and infant mortality and disease rates (zoonotic diseases + higher concentration of population to spread through) went up.

Ag gives more calories per square km, so more people. But also more vulnerability to disease, periodic famine, and in some cases malnutrition from over reliance on cereal crops (e.g. Pellagra). Hunter gatherers are/were constrained by wild food source densities but also tended to have smaller families, breast feed longer (so fewer pregnancies), and could sometimes migrate when local wild animal populations were exhausted. If you have a bad crop year you can't migrate to the next valley and find a new field of wheat waiting for you.

However there were likely many millennia of societies that mixed agriculture with hunting/gathering. Eastern woodland native Americans were like that pre-contact; maize agriculture + hunting game + fish etc. Seems like a good overall strategy.

[thaumasiotes]

> With the agrarian transition, population density and family sizes went up (a lot) but life expectancy went down a bit and infant mortality and disease rates (zoonotic diseases + higher concentration of population to spread through) went up.

Infant mortality going up is the same thing as life expectancy going down. Neither one tells you much about whether people die before or after you'd expect to start seeing problems in their teeth. After ignoring infant mortality, it's mostly afterward, but "remains" are not a representative selection.

> Hunter gatherers are/were constrained by wild food source densities but also tended to have smaller families

This conflicts with the idea that they had lower infant mortality.

[IIsi50MHz]

> > Hunter gatherers are/were constrained by wild food source densities but also tended to have smaller families

> This conflicts with the idea that they had lower infant mortality.

Not necessarily. Smaller family size can be a result of other factors outside of infant mortality.

[thaumasiotes]

Today, yes. In a premodern context, not likely.

[DropInIn]

> However there were likely many millennia of societies that mixed agriculture with hunting/gathering. Eastern woodland native Americans were like that pre-contact; maize agriculture + hunting game + fish etc. Seems like a good overall strategy.

Aren't there parts of rural China still living in that mixed model today? And Africa too iirc...

[thaumasiotes]

As described, everyone in the world is living that mixed model today. Fish mostly come from the ocean.

[pineconewarrior]

The bacteria which cause cavities also evolved alongside us. The problem worsened as we introduced more food for the bacteria (from the agrarian diet).

[ClumsyPilot]

> bacteria which cause cavities also evolved alongside us.

So did the tapeworms. Or fleas

[teryasdasd]

Even if you only eat meat (or whatever else besides grains), bits of food will still get wedged between into your gums and then rot away with your teeth.

[petrocrat]

It's not the fact that there is food stuck in your teeth that causes cavities, it's what pH results from the bacteria metabolizing that food. Bacteria breaking down carbs produces acidic conditions, but when they break down protein or fat the reaction products from that are much closer to neutral pH.

[droopyEyelids]

The meat doesnt contain a lot of carbohydrates for cavity causing bacteria to eat

[cmrdporcupine]

Sure, but it's a matter of degrees.

[EGreg]

Don’t vegetarians live 10 years longer, though? Seems like a net win for them

[slabity]

Yes. But is that a result of not eating meat? Or a result of paying close attention to your diet?

A lot of inexperienced vegetarians/vegans end up with nutrient deficiencies because they don't ensure that they are properly getting all essential vitamins or amino acids in their meatless diets. I'm not a dietician, but it's pretty safe to say that these people are not going to be the ones with reduced mortality rates. You cannot simply remove an entire food group from your diet without putting in effort into paying attention to the rest of your diet.

Some studies[1] show that pescetarian diets offer the lowest mortality rates. This diet still requires paying close attention to what you eat, but you are far less likely to have nutrient deficiencies.

This is one of the huge issues I have with diet-mortality studies. During the gluten-free trend a while back, there were many that suggested gluten-free diets provided health benefits. However, for the vast majority of people, gluten isn't really that special as far as proteins go. It turned out those "health benefits" were just the result of people with gluten intolerances actually paying attention to their diet.

Just to reiterate, I am not a dietician. Everything above is just my cynicism for studies that constantly fail to take into account that most people just don't care what they're eating. I would absolutely love to be proven wrong.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4191896/

[bawolff]

> A lot of inexperienced vegetarians/vegans end up with nutrient deficiencies because they don't ensure that they are properly getting all essential vitamins or amino acids in their meatless diets

While that certainly happens, its not like you have to maintain constant vigilance. Most popular vegetarian diets are nutrionally complete (major exception being vitamin b12 for vegans is something to be very careful about).

Like yes, if you decide to only eat rice and nothing else it will be bad, but its not like you have to meticulously record what you eat every meal. Getting all essential amino acids is pretty easy if you eat like a sane person.

[slabity]

Where did I imply you need to 'meticulously record every meal'? I explicitly added the "inexperienced" tag to try to avoid this kind of extreme contrarian argument.

> major exception being vitamin b12 for vegans is something to be very careful about

Add to that list iodine, omega-3, zinc, iron, calcium, and vitamin D. All of these are essential nutrients that vegetarians need to include in their diet. Sure, they're easier to get than B12, but they can still be pitfalls if you're careless.

> Getting all essential amino acids is pretty easy if you eat like a sane person.

Yes. That's basically the entire point I'm making. Most vegetarians eat 'like a sane person' because if they don't then they will have issues very quickly. Having a diet with meat means you can eat more carelessly because you're less likely to have immediate issues compared to eating carelessly as a vegetarian.

What I'm asking for are studies that take this into account. Studies that aren't just asking people if their diet includes something. Studies that actually take into account the fact that most people that don't care what they are eating tend to eat meat.

[DropInIn]

Did you actively ignore the word "inexperienced "?

[guy98238710]

Dogs don't get cavities. Human saliva is more acidic.

[mlyle]

Dogs absolutely get cavities. Yes, somewhat fewer, because:

- Dogs eat fewer carbs and don't really eat acidic foods (no soda, fruit)

- Dogs live a much shorter time and so there is much less time for damage to accumulate to enamel.