[wobblyasp]

So do you avoid going outside to reduce exposure to environmental pollutants?

Water fluoridation is a net-benefit to society.

[delichon]

I don't think informed consent is violated by removing a pollutant. But adding a substance as a healthcare treatment denies informed consent as an individual right, and turns it into a majority right. I'd hate for that to happen to other civil rights.

[doug_life]

Should we also stop adding iodide to salt or fortifying white bread? I see your point, but society has benefited as a whole by forcing some of these substances onto populations. I think it's fairly evident that many humans in the US are either unable or unwilling to really care about their health.

[perrygeo]

Bad analogy. Fortified food provide nutrients to supplement what you get from other foods. One can simply choose to buy white bread that's fortified, or whole foods that have those nutrients naturally.

You can't avoid water for too long though. Ingesting whatever is in the water supply is mandatory. I can't avoid flouride in my water any more than I can avoid Nitrogen when I breathe. I have no choice in the matter. It's the lack of choice that many object to, not the health effects of flouride per se.

Personally, if given the choice, I'd probably still take flouride. Having it in the water is convenient. Mandatory, but convenient.

[benlivengood]

Folks who don't want to drink flouride can use a reverse osmosis filter or drill a well.

You could also buy oxygen generators to avoid breathing as much nitrogen, but that's probably not a great idea in the long run.

[barbazoo]

It's also extreme individualism we've all been indoctrinated with and which is turned up to 11 in the US.

[roguecoder]

But uninformed consent to having you remove a necessary mineral from the water supply is fine?

If you are worried, you can get a gravity filter and take it out yourself.

[koolba]

> Water fluoridation is a net-benefit to society.

Banning more than one daily triple cheese burger would be net benefit to society as well. Likely more than we’re getting on dental cost savings. I doubt most would be okay with that though.

[roguecoder]

If you have strong evidence for your proposal, I haven't come across it in my literature reviews.

The only food I am aware of that has strong evidence that it contributes to poor health outcomes is sugary sodas. (The only other nutritional thing that consistently shows a negative impact on BMI is dieting: for everything else, populations are too heterogeneous for effects to be consistent. There are people whose combination of genetics + lifestyle make two or more triple cheese burgers a day a perfectly healthy diet.)

Outright bans and limitations on size of soda cups were both struck down by the courts, but soda taxes have been an effective public health intervention that reduce consumption and improve health outcomes: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/... And they do get widespread support among technocrats.