Dear all,

Much as I enjoy the lively discussion going on, can I just suggest that we
all move away from the 'individual as proof of a theory' idea?

Bob Avery writes:
> What's likely to "fall back" are your gum lines when you eat it.  In 10
> years of all raw, I have had NO new cavities or any increase in
> periodontal disease, yet my teeth are full of existing holes from my
> prior cooked diet.  I believe that cooked food is the primary cause of
> dental caries, which is certainly not a natural occurrence.

Barry Groves writes:
> Certainly my gums and teeth were not good at the time I started to eat a
> low-carb diet in 1962 when I was 26 years old. Since then I have had to have
> very little work done. Now age 67 I still have all my own teeth and my
> dentist always remarks how good my teeth and gums are.


Taken as generalisations (raw food diets don't give you caries, low-carb
diets don't give you caries) these two statements could be taken by some
readers to be contradictory. But the fact is that caries, gum disease,
in fact all dental health is a multi-factorial problem. And some
individuals may have good teeth on a rubbish diet and vice versa. If we
are to approach all (palaeo)diet scientifically, then we must look at
larger scale research than that on an individual.

'One swallow does not a summer make', and a finding based on a single
individual does not prove a scientific theory. Can I make a plea for us
all to try to take a more systematic approach?

ON the archaeological evidence, caries generally increases with increasing
agriculturalisation in the neolithic, but the evidence is equivocal in
some areas. Overall, most archaeologists believe it is the increasing
starchy content of the diet that results in caries, but this can be
moderated by a number of other factors.

Tamsin

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Dr Tamsin O'Connell
Research Laboratory for Archaeology
University of Oxford
6 Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3QJ, UK
tel:01865-283641
fax:01865-273932
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