[AndrewSwift]

People who want to remove fluoride from the water should visit countries where fluoride is not added and look at people's teeth.

I live in France and it's just so obvious that people grew up without fluoride — even celebrities try to talk without showing their teeth when they're on TV!

I'm all for getting consent in most cases, but sometimes you'd have to be an idiot not to take the obvious win.

It's like we were delivering flakes of gold with the mail and people complained — that's not what mailboxes are for!

[abxyz]

You're misattributing: the U.S. has a perfect white teeth culture that doesn't exist elsewhere. Many people outside of the U.S. have healthier but uglier teeth. Fluoride isn't the reason for good/bad teeth inside/outside of the U.S, it's cultural. Many places outside of the U.S. do put fluoride in their water (nationally or regionally) and have "bad" teeth (e.g: England).

[blitzar]

People in the U.S. don't have perfect white teeth, they have are cosmetic procedures on their teeth equivalent to liposuction, silicone, botox, hair plugs and/or laminated face.

[kelnos]

I think that's exactly what the GP meant when they said "perfect white teeth culture".

Perfect white teeth doesn't mean they're healthy.

[AndrewSwift]

What does a white-tooth culture look like specifically? People brush their teeth in France, they have modern dentristy etc.

[cenamus]

People don't bleach their teeth much outside the US as far as I know. You can see it especially well with US actors, their teeth looking like the someone photoshopped them to #FFFFFF

[Clubber]

Those are actually veneers. They grind down their real teeth into basically fence posts to use as a structure to glue fake teeth on them.

https://davidfisherdds.com/how-long-does-it-take-for-porcela...

[JeremyNT]

Others note the bleaching, which is relatively low cost, but the (purely cosmetic) straightening is probably the more interesting example.

People in the US pay a lot of money to have very straight teeth. You can see this clearly with American celebrities and actors (versus European counterparts), but the culture of cosmetically modifying teeth is very strong all across "middle class" and up America as well.

[wqaatwt]

Way more people having their teeth whitened? Braces being more popular.

[carlosjobim]

Bleaching your teeth, specifically.

[__alexs]

US people wear facades to hide their teeth.

[EasyMark]

*A significant minority of...

[bobbylarrybobby]

While tooth whiteness in the US is often divorced from tooth health, fluoride does add a yellowish tint to your teeth, so the healthiest teeth — those imbued with fluoride — are slightly yellow. (In fact when they first decided to add fluoride to water, one of the questions was just how much they could add before your teeth would turn completely yellow. Health-wise the yellowing was fine, but it was obviously visually unappealing.) Ugly teeth may be due to poor/lack of orthodontia, but it's probably not due to better dental care.

[lukan]

But flakes of gold are not associated with a lower IQ in children.

"The NTP monograph concluded, with moderate confidence, that higher levels of fluoride exposure, such as drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter, are associated with lower IQ in children."

https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...

So it is also not clear, if the lower concentration typically found also has this effect.

"It is important to note that there were insufficient data to determine if the low fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L currently recommended for U.S. community water supplies has a negative effect on children’s IQ."

But the solution of just using (cheap) Fluor in toothpaste to apply the Flour where it should go - to the teeth and not the stomach, sounds smarter to me.

[kelnos]

So in other words, 0.7mg/L fluoridated water is also not associated with lower IQ in children. That study did not prove it safe, but it did prove it unsafe, either.

[lukan]

That study did prove, that too much flouride is not good for intelligence.

And there are other sources besides water from the tap, so I don't think it is intelligent to raise the base level, when the option of local applying exists. What is wrong with toothpaste?

[eigart]

Where I live, dental health is good and we don’t have fluorides in the water (we have free, mandatory dental care for children). We recently banned the use of fluorides to make our skis go fast because of the environmental impact.

[wqaatwt]

> even celebrities try to talk without showing their teeth

So fluoride would somehow magically replace braces or teeth whiteners?

[xandrius]

Interesting how France does add fluoride to the water (according to Wikipedia) while many other countries aren't.

US is an outlier there, so there is that.

[ekianjo]

> I live in France and it's just so obvious that people grew up without fluoride

And yet France does not have a dental health crisis so it's just for cosmetic reasons we don't need fluoride

[horns4lyfe]

Good thing we have fluoride toothpaste then