How did people maintain their teeth before toothpaste?
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One useful thing to note i didn’t see yet is about the food we eat. Iirc a typical 7 year old in the modern world has eaten more sugar than a typical person would in their entire lifetime hundreds of years ago. Diet has a big impact.
This is also why dental hygiene tends to get worse among the poorest people before it gets better, even in the modern world. The poorest typically live off staples like rice and beans, and similar local versions of this. And almost nothing else. Their dental hygiene, even without toothpaste, isn’t as bad as you’d expect. It gets worse tho as the family gets a little more income and starts buying meats and junk food. But not yet toothpaste regularly and similar things. I live in a community that’s at that second stage of development and dental hygiene is generally awful because the food available (and desired) is mostly junk food and cheap meats.
As people get a bit wealthier, they then start getting better dental hygiene from there and the curve trends back upwards. The dip in dental hygiene as the poorest get a little more income and dental hygiene gets worse for a bit is interesting tho.
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