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A study published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds that vegetarians are much more likely to suffer from tooth decay, lower (more acidic) salivary pH levels, and lower stimulated saliva flow than control subjects that were matched by sex and age. In addition, plant-based diets pose a greater risk for fractures according to a related, peer-reviewed study of over 55,000 people.
Specifically, the study found that those who consumed a vegetarian diet were:
…much more likely than age- and sex-matched controls to have dental erosions on some tooth surfaces, lower salivary pH levels, and lower stimulated saliva flow. (1)
Conclusions from the study found that:
The rate of flow of saliva and consumption of vinegar-containing foods, citrus fruits, and acid berries was associated with the dental erosions noted. Diets that are excessively high in fruit juices were also found to erode dental enamel. (1)
The study confirms what Dr. Weston A. Price DDS in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, discovered on his 10-year journey around the world studying isolated, traditional societies still untouched by what he termed “the displacing foods of modern commerce.”
Dr. Price found that indigenous vegetarian cultures suffered from tooth decay at a higher rate than either the omnivore or the almost completely carnivorous cultures he studied.
The published study concluded that eating a vegetarian or vegan diet does not in any way impart a dental health advantage over non-vegetarians. Criticisms of What The Health, the pro-vegan documentary, reveal similarly ignored research.
The baloney-based claims in the book Blue Zones and the vegan bible The China Study are similarly misguided with shocking factual oversights, omissions, and data fudging.
Tooth Decay Signals Poor Immunity and Nutrient Deficiencies
Tooth decay is an indication of lowered immune function and a higher susceptibility to degenerative disease in general. Ever heard of the term “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”? This refers to the well known historical practice of examining a horse’s teeth and gums to assess overall health elsewhere in the body.
People can similarly assess their level of general health and whether it is improving or declining by observing the health of their teeth and gums.
Rami Nagel, author of the book Cure Tooth Decay, states that the dentinal-fluid transport mechanism is how the body controls the rate of tooth decay including whether or not it occurs at all. When tooth decay is present, Mr. Nagel says this is a sign that blood sugar levels are askew and that certain critical nutrients such as the fat-soluble activators A, D, and K2 are lacking in the diet.
Vegetarian diets are typically much higher in grains and sugars (from fruit) than non-vegetarians, and when the body senses too much sugar at one time, this can initiate demineralization of the teeth. Ever noticed how your teeth can get a bit sensitive for a period of time after a very sugary dessert or a day that included too many grain-based foods and treats?
If you are vegetarian and have noted a problem with dental decay, incorporating grass-fed meats, raw grass-fed dairy, wild seafood, and high vitamin cod liver oil into your diet will introduce the critical nutrients that are necessary to reverse caries and prevent further problems.
Moreover, whenever sweet foods such as fruit are consumed, they should always be eaten in the presence of healthy fat like cream to maintain stable blood sugar and not disrupt the body’s ability to transport minerals.
Reference and More Information
(1) The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 27 Dec 2011, 712-738
Sarah,
I am a big fan of your blog and of the Weston A. Price foundation. I like, as much as the next guy, any chance to show that a vegetarian or vegan diet is lacking. However, I suggest you change the title of this post. It is misleading. Your post even states:
“The published study concluded that eating a vegetarian diet does not in any way impart a dental health advantage over non-vegetarians.“
That vegetarians have more tooth decay (than whom, by the way?), as claimed in the title, is proven neither in your post or the cited study.
agreed! sweeping generalizations aren’t healthy for anyone!
I’m not following your point, Joel. The title implies that nonvegetarians have less tooth decay. This seems obvious to me. The study found that vegetarians have more tooth decay and more acidic saliva as stated in the first line of the post.
Vegans are also non-vegetarians. Do they have less tooth decay than vegetarians? I did read the part about more acidic saliva, but as the study states, when coupled with good dental hygiene, this is not a threat to dental health. Do all vegetarians have acidic saliva coupled with poor dental hygiene? In the link you cite in the post, the conclusion of the study was that, “vegetarian diets do not provide any distinct dental advantage over nonvegetarian diets.”
My point, as Andrea picked up, was that you are making a generalization that is not helpful. If it were true that vegetarian diets promoted more tooth decay than all non-vegetarian diets, then I would be ok with the title of your post.
Um, vegans are vegetarians. They just happen to be stricter than ovo-lactos.
Please don’t tell me you call fish-eaters “vegetarians” too.
I read the journal article and I’m afraid I have to agree with Joel.
Specifically the paragraph about dental health opens with, “There is little evidence that vegetarians have better dental health than do nonvegetarians.” You can’t just turn that around and say that there is then evidence that nonvegetarians have better teeth.
The only thing that the article says is that in ONE STUDY the researchers found that lactovegetarians were much more likely to have dental erosions, lower saliva pH and lower saliva flow.
I like your posts, but be careful to not read more into what was written than is really there. You turned OINE study that found something about lactovegetarians into all vegetarians. But that’s not even the study you referenced. The authors of the study you’re basing this article (per the reference you list) on deemed dental health differences between vegetarians and nonvegetarians as a whole inconclusive.
This is not just one study Audrey. You are completely discounting the work of Dr. Price which provides historical evidence of the same thing.
I don’t disagree with you here, but you shouldn’t claim that the “new study” proves this.
I am not discounting Dr Price at all. I’m saying what you wrote as you wrote it doesn’t agree with the study you’re referencing.
You state: “A study published this week in the peer reviewed medical journal, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, finds that vegetarians are much more likely to suffer from tooth decay, lower (more acidic) salivary pH levels, and lower stimulated saliva flow than control subjects that were matched by sex and age.”
But that is not what that study (the one you gave a link to) found.
I am a big fan of Dr. Price’s work.
The study which you say was published “this week” is in a journal from 1988. It says in the abstract that the “data are only fair to poor that … dental carries are lower in vegetarians.” Read the study and it says that some veg diets high in fruit juice may be a problem with inadequate hygiene.
Not new, not news.
One reason, besides Price’s assertion that animal products provide nutrients necessary for healthy teeth and bones, is that vegetarians eat a lot of grains and fruit, therefore have more sugar in their system.
Not all vegetarians eat more grains and fruit than meat-eaters. I for one, don’t 🙂 I’d be curious to read the study to see what kind of vegetarian diet (there are so many kinds of vegetarians, you know!), the people in the study ate.
I agree! This vegetarian has no filling and no cavities….and I’m in my 40’s! Not all vegetarians are the same….good point!
Are you ovo-lacto? That alone could explain it, if you’re eating a fair amount of eggs and cheese. I find it telling that cheese is the number one vegan cheat food: it contains vitamins A, B12, and K2 analog mk-4, all of which are lacking in the vegan diet.
(You can get K2 analog mk-7 from natto, but that analog does not cross the human placenta in a pregnancy, which would indicate to me that adults don’t have much use for it either, compared to mk-4. And we have even less use for K1, if the Rotterdam Study is to be believed.)
I follow a high raw vegan diet and I do not have dental problems of any kind. I just had my last checkup and two months ago. In fact, my dental health has vastly improved since I became vegan.
i can not oppose the opinions of the author but the true is that human teeth for vegetarianism. our nature are for vegetarianism, decay of teeth depend on oral hygiene, such reports will promote the non- vegs will be more harmful for the health.
Oral hygiene can help slow down the decay of the teeth but since the rotting is primarily from nutritional deficiency, ultimately even teeth that are meticulously cleaned will rot if the diet is insufficient in the fat soluble activators which supercharge mineral absorption to the teeth.
No, our nature is omnivorous, sorry, with a heavier emphasis on meat-eating than most modern people want to admit. The human brain is too large for its energy needs to be supported on an all-plants diet with the length of the human colon being what it is. (The colon is the only part of the intestine that even deals with plant foods!)
A healthy human with a properly working GI tract is a very efficient digester of animal protein, which is why human diabetics must inject insulin rather than take it orally; insulin is a peptide hormone, peptides being segments of protein molecules. Also, we have several hormones that raise blood sugar, but only one that lowers it. As toxic as glucose is in the human body in excessive amounts, you would think we’d have several hormones for the purpose of lowering blood sugar if we were meant to consume that much sugar-forming food.
I’m trying to get at the science here rather than the ideology. Last I knew, India has one of the highest rates of heart disease in the world. High vegetarian population. But I’m sure that’s a coincidence.
India has a high rate of heart disease because Indians have an enormous junk (“street”) food and sweet culture.
Just because some vegetarians aren’t careful about what they eat, doesn’t mean that it’s not possible to be vegetarian and eat healthily. And there are plenty of non-vegetarians who eat a totally crappy diet. None of the 36 countries which rank higher than India in heart disease incidence are known for having a large number of vegetarians: http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/coronary-heart-disease/by-country/
My point being: whether or not you are vegetarian is more or less independent of whether or not you eat a healthy diet.
@sadhu vedant muni jain — decay of teeth does NOT depend on oral hygiene. Dr. Price found that in certain cultures in Switzerland people did not brush their teeth at all. They had very, very little incidence of tooth decay (like 4/100, if I remember correctly) and their teeth were covered in “green slime”. …and yet, they had such low rates of tooth decay! They ate very well, however. They consumed lots of raw dairy and cheese! If you consume a very nutrient dense diet, you will find that your enamel will not only harden, but also repair enamel that has already been damaged!
I won’t try to dispute the study. However, I have been a vegetarian for many years and before that, I did not consume a whole lot of animal protein. I have NO CAVITIES and NO FILLINGS! I’m in my 40’s and my dentist says I have the teeth of a teenager!
Once again, I wonder why those who are NOT vegetarians feel the need to malign those who are. Granted…..there are also plenty of vegans and vegetarians that have plenty of studies “proving” (please note the reason for the quotation marks) how meat eating detrimentally affects one’s health. I had this discussion with others before. There needs to be less food “elitism” and maligning and more discussion on how find the best choices for each of our diet preferences. For instance, eating meat from very ill animals from the CAFO industry will ulitmately make us sicker in the long run than a vegetarian diet.
By the way….how many of you out there are filling and cavity free? This vegetarian is!
Eating a vegan diet would kill you in six months to a year if you took no supplements.
Ovo-lacto is somewhat better but still not ideal, unless you consume LOTS of eggs and dairy.
And you can only eat ovo-lacto in the first place if someone else is eating your meat for you. On this count, at least, the vegans are correct about inherent hypocrisy in the ovo-lacto philosophy. You’re really *not* saving any animals, sorry. Animal reproduction is *required* in order for milk in particular to be produced, and what in the world would we do with all those extra cattle and goats and so on? We’d be overrun with them. So someone’s got to eat them.
I should probably point out here, too, that while vegans and vegetarians routinely refer to omnivores as unhealthy animal-murderers, the reverse is generally not true. Although I have taken lately to pointing out that even if you never touch animal products again, your eating habits still require the killing of animals, since pesticides are used in the growing of crops, and plowing fields always kills some rodents and other vertebrates.
YOU are the ones, though, who made this a moral issue. Don’t be surprised when some of us start fighting back. No one likes being called undeserved names. It is no more murder when I eat a hamburger than it is when a lion downs a zebra. And “being more intelligent” or “being more moral” is no excuse. It’s stupid and immoral and hypocritical to complain about cows eating Fritos in dairy barns because that’s “not species-appropriate” and then to expect a hunting ape to eat like a rabbit.
(Insert usual disclaimer about understanding that some people don’t believe in evolution–nevertheless.)
Wow…..you’re making some really crazy assumptions about me!!!! I said I was vegetarian, NOT vegan. I made zero claims about why I have chosen a vegetarian diet. You simply confirmed my belief that many in the food “elitism” are too busy promoting their own way that they’re incapable of really listening to what others are saying.
“Eating a vegan diet would kill you in six months to a year if you took no supplements.”
This is such bs. I’ve been a vegan for two years and haven’t taken supplements, and I haven’t died and am actually very healthy.
We knew it all along! Now I have to convince my big wig colleagues at whole foods what we are missing! Wish me luck!
YOU GO JENNIFER!!!!!!!!!! All the best intentions go with you from the readers of this blog! Fight the good fight for all of us!
Whole foods will never change because there’s no money for grocery stores in a Real food economy. Whole foods makes the bulk of their profit on organic junk food made from soy, wheat, and corn just like the rest of he grocery stores do. They just slap a “certification”
On it and call it healthy. There’s a reason the impulse sections at the register are filled with candy and chips. They wouldn’t make a profit off of grassfed beef steaks over there.
I think that is part of mainstream-manipulation. who’s been vegetarian or vegan for a while see lots of these studies come around, we know they aren’t true. tooth decay is caused by sugar, no matter if u eat or don’t eat animal products. I can prove that green stockings prevent cancer, with a properly set up study.
@Laura that is partially correct. Vegetarians do tend to eat more sugar (fruit and grains) than nonvegetarians but also have a harder time getting adequate Vitamin A, D, and K which contributes greatly to tooth decay. This is not just one study but corroborates anthropological evidence as researched by Dr. Price.
Personally I know of several vegans who all have terrible teeth. I too suffered from gum disease at 29 despite eating what I thought was a very healthy vegetarian diet while brushing and flossing religiously. Looking back on it I mostly blame the soy products I was eating which is really bad for mineral absorption, etc. My gum disease is mostly in remission now and overall feel 110 % better since I’ve embraced the Weston A. Price philosophy on eating. I’ll never go back to being a strict veggie.
As a vegan, I have discovered such a wide variety of foods to improve my all round nutrition that I feel surprised that anyone should depend on soy products to support their vegan diet. I mean you follow a faulty diet with poor nutrition and lack of variety and then blame veganism or vegetarianism. Its the easiest lame excuse to go back on meat.
I think it should be emphasized that vegan/vegetarianism includes lots of seasonal fruit, fresh vegetables, salad greens, some nuts, seeds, and occasionally some soaked/sprouted and fermented grains and legumes.
I don’t think there should be ANY tooth or bone deterioration when you follow a proper vegan diet
I’ve been a vegetarian for 20 years and have never even had a cavity.
Eat Meat, save your teeth (and health!) New Study: Vegetarians Have More Tooth Decay http://t.co/u2GncPEP