Rethinking Cavities: Beyond Sugar and Acid

Rethinking Cavities: Beyond Sugar and Acid

For generations, we’ve been taught that candy, soda, and poor brushing are the prime culprits behind tooth decay. Indeed, sugar-fueled bacteria produce acids that erode enamel – but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. A growing body of evidence, much of it dating back nearly a century, reveals a deeper truth: the groundwork for cavity-prone or cavity-resistant teeth is laid long before a child ever tastes a sweet treat. In other words, nutrition during tooth development may set the stage for lifelong oral health.

Pioneering dental researchers in the early 20th century began to challenge the simplistic “sugar causes cavities” story. They encountered perplexing cases: children with excellent brushing habits still getting multiple cavities, and others who ate plenty of sweets yet remained cavity- free. What made the difference? The answer often lay in the internal strength and structure of the teeth themselves, determined by diet during the teeth’s formation. If teeth develop with robust enamel and dentin (thanks to proper nutrients), they can resist acid attacks and even repair early damage. On the other hand, teeth formed under nutritional deficiencies can be weaker and more porous, giving bacteria an easy foothold to cause decay. Cavities, in this view, are not just an infection but a sign of degeneration fueled by malnutrition.

One key finding from those early studies was that tooth decay isn’t fully explained by germs and sugar alone. For example, the British scientist Lady May Mellanby observed that good oral hygiene and low sugar intake still “failed to explain” why some kids got decay. By the 1920s, she and other forward-thinking researchers shifted their focus to diet. In controlled trials, Lady Mellanby showed that animals and children raised on vitamin-rich diets developed nearly perfect teeth – with thick enamel and strong structure – even when exposed to oral bacteria and sugars. Conversely, those on poor diets got cavities much more easily, no matter how clean their mouths were.

Around the same time, a Canadian dentist named Dr. Weston A. Price traveled the globe to study the teeth of people living on traditional diets. He found entire communities – from alpine villages in Switzerland to remote Pacific Islands – where tooth decay was almost nonexistent, despite some groups eating plenty of natural carbohydrates. Their secret was not superior brushing or magical genetics, but rather nutrient-dense traditional foods, especially foods rich in certain fat-soluble vitamins. Dr. Price documented that when these people stuck to their ancestral diet (loaded with things like grass-fed dairy, organ meats, shellfish, and other sacred animal foods), fewer than 1% of their teeth had cavities. But when the same families adopted modern processed foods (white flour, sugar, margarine, etc.), they rapidly developed decay and other health problems. These dramatic differences reframed the cavity debate: it wasn’t sugar alone that determined dental destiny – it was whether the body had the nutritional defenses and resilient tooth structure to withstand sugar.

This paradigm shift has big implications. To truly prevent cavities, we must look beyond the candy jar and into the grocery basket. We need to start at the very beginning – even before a baby’s teeth emerge – and ask if the right building blocks were there to create decay-resistant teeth. Modern research and these early dental pioneers point to four specific nutrients as the foundation of that “internal armor” for teeth: the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K2. In the coming posts, we’ll explore how each of these vitamins works from the inside out to fortify teeth and gums, and how embracing the traditional, animal-based foods rich in these vitamins can set children up for a lifetime of healthy smiles.

KareFor’s nutritional philosophy is built on these very principles – focusing on the foundational nutrients that make teeth strong.