Dr Weston Price (1870-1948), warned humanity that most modern Western dental problems were a product of the over-civilised diets of the West, high sugar, refined foods that did not exercise the jaw, and were unhealthy in themselves, especially refined white sugar, the white death. He studied native populations at the time of the early 20trh century, and found that they had healthy teeth, until eating Western high sugar diets, after which their dental health disintegrated, literally. Now it seems that the establishment is catching up to Dr Price:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-we-have-so-many-problems-with-our-teeth/
“Our dental issues are not normal. Most other vertebrate creatures do not have the same dental problems that we do. They rarely have crooked teeth or cavities. Our fossil forebears did not have impacted wisdom teeth, and few appear to have had gum disease. Indeed, the teeth of modern-day humans are a profound contradiction. They are the hardest parts of our body yet are incredibly fragile. Although teeth endure for millions of years in the fossil record, ours cannot seem to last a lifetime in our mouths. Teeth gave our ancestors dominance over the organic world, yet today ours require special daily care to be maintained. The contradiction is new and is limited largely to industrial-age and contemporary populations. It is best explained by a mismatch between today’s diets and those for which our teeth and jaws evolved. Paleontologists have long understood that our teeth are deeply rooted in evolutionary history. Now clinical researchers and dental practitioners are also starting to take notice. To understand why the teeth of modern-day humans are so prone to decay, we need to consider the natural oral environment. The healthy mouth is teeming with life, populated by billions of microbes representing up to 700 different species of bacteria alone. Most are beneficial. They fight disease, help with digestion and regulate various bodily functions. Other bacteria are harmful to teeth, such as mutans streptococci and Lactobacillus. They attack enamel with lactic acid produced during their metabolism. But concentrations of these bacteria are usually too low to cause permanent damage. Their numbers are kept in check by their commensal cousins, the mitis and sanguinis streptococcal groups. These bacteria produce alkalis (chemicals that raise pH), as well as antimicrobial proteins that inhibit the growth of harmful species. Saliva buffers the teeth against acid attack and bathes them in calcium and phosphate to remineralize their surface. The balance between demineralization and remineralization has held for hundreds of millions of years, and both beneficial and harmful bacteria are found in oral microbiomes across the mammalian order. We evolved to maintain a stable community of microbes, as Kevin Foster of the University of Oxford and his colleagues have put it, to “keep the ecosystem on a leash.”

