When Health Food Harms

We were chatting with our kids' dentist the other day, and he was telling us about the surprising decline in children's dental health that he's seen over the past few years. After decades of improvement, the number of kids with cavities is now skyrocketing. Why? His answer: health-conscious parents are giving their kids bottled water and fruit juice, which at least from a tooth perspective are actually harming their health.

The bottled water isn't fluoridated and the fruit juice is both full of sugar and, in the case or orange and other citrus juices, acid. He said he's seen some toddlers who were given apple juice in their bottles who have lost most of their baby teeth from sugar-induced rot.

This problem is now widely recognized in dental circles, even if most parents aren't aware of it yet. From a 2005 article in MedPages:

The bottled water issue was raised at the World Dental Congress in Montreal, Dr. Cottrell said, as part of a general discussion about what to do about the sudden rise in tooth decay in children.

The American Dental Association says that more and more "health-conscious consumers are sipping bottled water." Indeed, says the International Bottled Water Association, in 2004 Americans drank nearly 6.8 billion gallons, for a per capita consumption level of 23.8 gallons. That's an 8.6% increase over the previous year, the association says.

The problem is that people are turning away from tap water—which for over two-thirds of Americans contains all of the fluoride that they need to prevent tooth decay—and most bottled waters don't have enough fluoride.

What other "health foods" are actually having a counterproductive effect, due either to inappropriate use or poor understanding of their actual nutritional or medical implications?

—Chris Anderson

(Chris' other blogs: Geekdad and The Long Tail. Plus there's the magazine he edits.)

Image: BBC