I can tell you that salt is not fluoridated in the Netherlands (most people who care about cooking use pure sea salt anyway). As for toothpaste, almost every toothpaste anywhere in the world has it.
There is evidence both ways, the original reports were that children's dental health improved after they stopped fluoridation in the 70s.
We don’t fluoridate our water but from 12-18 we do “fluor happen” (loosely translated: “fluor biting”), where we are given an upper and a lower bit which are both filled with heavily fluoridated gel, you bite into it and after a couple of minutes you take the bits out, rinse your mouth and then spit out any left-overs.
I grew up in the US and remember this too, an absolute gag inducing gel that they put in a little mouthguard shaped thing and jammed in your mouth.
There have been various iterations of dentist office flouride treatments I remember.
As an adult the dentists I went to switched to a 2x 30 second rinse (60 second?) with a mouthwash at the end of the appoinment.
The last 10 years they eliminated that and I do a nightly flouride rinse.
I lived various places as a kid, from 10-18 I lived somewhere with no flouride in the water (rural with well water) and we did pills and dentist treatments instead.
Too much in this thread assumes everything is the same everywhere in a given country.
I have also probably never brushed my teeth with a non fluoride toothpaste living in the US. So it's not like that's different from the EU.
I forgot about this. This was a total nightmare for me as a kid. The gel made me want to throw up badly. I think they offered two "flavours" you could pick from, both equally nightmarish.
In Italy, many years ago, when I was a kid, this fluoride bite was something that was given to us at (elementary) school, cannot remember if once or twice a year, they made a sort of quick medical checkup and while the doctor was visiting you, you had this bite.
But the practice was later abandoned, as it seems that the 6-8 age is the worst one to supplement (too much) fluoride, that could later develop in dental fluorosis:
> There is evidence both ways, the original reports were that children's dental health improved after they stopped fluoridation in the 70s.
Has that effect been persistent? I would think the news of flouride being removed from the water would cause an increase in dental health diligence, but I would also be surprised if that effect didn’t wane over time.
I don't know what they do in the Netherlands, but in rural parts of the United States where people are on well water, fluoride treatments are common. Florida is directly applied to the teeth during a dental visit, then washed out.
Anecdotally, this is what I had and I have great Dental Health despite for brushing hygiene. I often skip brushing my teeth and almost never floss and haven't had a cavity in 40 years
Fwiw, I’ve pretty much always lived with access to municipal water with added flouride and have also always been given flouride treatment at the dentist. I think the latter is pretty universal in the US.
I remember growing up in the 80s in the Netherlands I used to get daily fluoride tablets, from a small pink bottle. Did not persist long I believe, but was definitely common back then.
Toothpaste, for the most part, isn't swallowed. Salt, you can get any kind you want. I think this gives consumers more discretion/control over what they want to or do not want to ingest.
Yes, I agree. I was just pushing back against the common false narrative that no fluoride in tap water equals no fluoride at all. It's brought up as a fact in every online discussion about fluoride.
Usually it's alongside that one study that shows naturally occurring fluoride in water is harmful to children's mental development. Which is true, but neglects to mention that the areas studied (in rural China) had levels of fluoride twenty times higher then public water fluoridation programs and that the same study also included a control group at "normal" added fluoride level and found no negative effect.
Heres the study. You'll start to recognize it if you get involved in a few of these discussions.
As an aside, your gums and tongue will absorb a lot - think about chewing tobacco, people putting cocaine on their gums, pills you leave under your tongue. This is also why resorts will tell you to brush your teeth with bottled water.
While it obviously absorbs less than eating any compound, it still absorbs quite a bit!
