Dammit, Tuck! I am getting good and tired of all this, "evidence says" and "history clearly shows" stuff. What about what my favorite diet guru says? What about what famous MDs, who want to appear heterodox but are actually quite mainstream, say? (I won't call any names, but yes, I bought his recent book.) Anyway, appreciate the detailed analysis and agree wholeheartedly. The lack of cavities thing seems like a slam dunk. This, of course, means that many other "experts" will attack it, you, and your selection of pet, for the rest of the week! (By the way, I'm a huge fan of Professor Lieberman too.)
I feel like my main job nowadays is linking this book: https://amzn.to/4bUpmrq but it has a lot about ancient cavities, (and diets) used specifically to measure the border/horizon between agricultural and livestock-eating societies in ancient Eastern Europe.
All true-enough in the conclusions, but there are more inputs for dental health than these mentioned here. I was raised on a high starch vegetarian diet without health insurance and only rare visits to the dentist and I have my full set of teeth including wisdom. Zero cavities. Why? Largely genetic differences in pH of my saliva. Instead, I have battled plaque, which from the archaeological record, we know, also was a thing for our ancient ancestors. While it is true that the plant-based high-carb people are just making it up and our ancestors were absolutely apex predators, we shouldn't make too much of absence of evidence regarding tooth decay.
When I talked to a friend how the jump in cavities corresponded to the jump in agriculture, they correctly pointed out that the transition to farming also brought overcrowding, famine, and overall shorter stature. So the advent of agriculture brought about mass malnutrition, not just carbs. I've always wondered: how much of the carb-cavities link is because carbohydrates invariably cause cavities, and how much is because they crowd out better sources of nutrition that we need to keep our teeth strong and resilient?
I won't claim that Western Price found an association between carbs and caries in the people he studied. He found very good teeth in oat meal eating Hebrides Islanders and bread eating isolated Swiss villages and lake-dwelling Bantus.
His point was difference between devitalised displacing foods of modern civilization--white bread, jams, margarine and vitamin and mineral rich traditional foods.
As you write, co-consumption of meat, fish or dairy can reduce or even eliminate caries even in presence of carbs so no-caries alone is not a signature of low-carb consumption.
Will sugar be not so bad for caries? I suppose the sugar as dissolved in a sugary drink would travel rapidly out of the mouth so perhaps not much danger of it being consumed by mouth bacteria.
If I may throw some more light on the discussion of what humans ate during the Paleolithic: it was during the last part of the Paleolithic - the Epipaleolithic - that the human diet really started to change. Before then, we lived on the megafauna. It was the Ice Age, after all, so fatty meat was just the ticket. But the Epipaleolithic, which represents the last 20,000 years of the Paleolithic, saw the gradual introduction of occasional cereal consumption alongside hunting of smaller animals. The megafauna disappeared along with the ice. That's also when evidence of cavities starts to appear. That would also explain why food such as acorns entered the diet - we just ate whatever was available. The good old days of woolly mammoths were over.
The decay seems obvious, but I wonder how the crooked teeth come about. I believe Weston Price found this too. Is carb intake somehow causing crooked teeth/badly formed jaw growth in kids? Is it the lack of something (micronutrients?) in meat? Or is the constant presence of dental decay from childbirth enough to cause this misgrowth?
Excellent summary, thanks. I appreciate the observation that if something is bad for your teeth, there's a good chance it's bad for the rest of you as well.
Dammit, Tuck! I am getting good and tired of all this, "evidence says" and "history clearly shows" stuff. What about what my favorite diet guru says? What about what famous MDs, who want to appear heterodox but are actually quite mainstream, say? (I won't call any names, but yes, I bought his recent book.) Anyway, appreciate the detailed analysis and agree wholeheartedly. The lack of cavities thing seems like a slam dunk. This, of course, means that many other "experts" will attack it, you, and your selection of pet, for the rest of the week! (By the way, I'm a huge fan of Professor Lieberman too.)
I feel like my main job nowadays is linking this book: https://amzn.to/4bUpmrq but it has a lot about ancient cavities, (and diets) used specifically to measure the border/horizon between agricultural and livestock-eating societies in ancient Eastern Europe.
All true-enough in the conclusions, but there are more inputs for dental health than these mentioned here. I was raised on a high starch vegetarian diet without health insurance and only rare visits to the dentist and I have my full set of teeth including wisdom. Zero cavities. Why? Largely genetic differences in pH of my saliva. Instead, I have battled plaque, which from the archaeological record, we know, also was a thing for our ancient ancestors. While it is true that the plant-based high-carb people are just making it up and our ancestors were absolutely apex predators, we shouldn't make too much of absence of evidence regarding tooth decay.
When I talked to a friend how the jump in cavities corresponded to the jump in agriculture, they correctly pointed out that the transition to farming also brought overcrowding, famine, and overall shorter stature. So the advent of agriculture brought about mass malnutrition, not just carbs. I've always wondered: how much of the carb-cavities link is because carbohydrates invariably cause cavities, and how much is because they crowd out better sources of nutrition that we need to keep our teeth strong and resilient?
Good point. OTOH there's other evidence about what people ate in the Paleolithic, like https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.24247 (a review coauthored by one of the people mentioned above, Miki Ben-Dor).
I won't claim that Western Price found an association between carbs and caries in the people he studied. He found very good teeth in oat meal eating Hebrides Islanders and bread eating isolated Swiss villages and lake-dwelling Bantus.
His point was difference between devitalised displacing foods of modern civilization--white bread, jams, margarine and vitamin and mineral rich traditional foods.
As you write, co-consumption of meat, fish or dairy can reduce or even eliminate caries even in presence of carbs so no-caries alone is not a signature of low-carb consumption.
Will sugar be not so bad for caries? I suppose the sugar as dissolved in a sugary drink would travel rapidly out of the mouth so perhaps not much danger of it being consumed by mouth bacteria.
If I may throw some more light on the discussion of what humans ate during the Paleolithic: it was during the last part of the Paleolithic - the Epipaleolithic - that the human diet really started to change. Before then, we lived on the megafauna. It was the Ice Age, after all, so fatty meat was just the ticket. But the Epipaleolithic, which represents the last 20,000 years of the Paleolithic, saw the gradual introduction of occasional cereal consumption alongside hunting of smaller animals. The megafauna disappeared along with the ice. That's also when evidence of cavities starts to appear. That would also explain why food such as acorns entered the diet - we just ate whatever was available. The good old days of woolly mammoths were over.
The decay seems obvious, but I wonder how the crooked teeth come about. I believe Weston Price found this too. Is carb intake somehow causing crooked teeth/badly formed jaw growth in kids? Is it the lack of something (micronutrients?) in meat? Or is the constant presence of dental decay from childbirth enough to cause this misgrowth?
Excellent summary, thanks. I appreciate the observation that if something is bad for your teeth, there's a good chance it's bad for the rest of you as well.
Acorns and grains are kinda rich in omega6 PUFAs. Starchy tubers less so. Coincidence?