Can We Determine What You Eat By Microwear On Teeth?

The health of people and the importance of food they have eaten is under careful study.  We can determine if early ancestors ate plant, meat or both plant and meat depending on food availability.  These studies are done on the buccal tooth-surface microwear, where the average density and length of the striations on the buccal, or cheek, surfaces of teeth.

Tooth-surface microwear is highly correlated with abrasive particles in foodstuffs during chewing are this is determined by the abrasiveness of food eaten.  For instance, many fossil hominins exhibit antemortem chips on their posterior teeth, indicating their use of a strong bite to consume large hard foods such as seeds. 

The high density of striations observed in the buccal surfaces of several Neanderthal teeth might be indicative of the inclusion of plant foods in their diet, states a study done by the Department on Animal Biology at the University of Barcelona.  Some of the reasons I have found for studying microwear is to determine the ecology of extinct mammals.

We could take this information a step further.  We could use this material to determine how healthy extinct mammals, or even our ancestors, were by what they ate. Maybe we could even use this type of information in an autopsy of humans.  Maybe we could use this information to determine how a tooth implant may have become loose.  This is not entirely out of the question as the Center of Biomechanics and Skeletal Biology at the University Medical Center of Hamburg-Eppendorf Germany has already started investigating this.  They found that the interpretation of findings indicates that different mechanisms of origin in terms of tissue contamination with wear debris and the alloy should be included in the improvement of implants or implantation techniques.

I did not find much information on this, but I don't see why more people don't allow this to be done.  Maybe it is not entirely possible  because a study done by the Department of Biology at Duke University, states that the abrasiveness of dietary components depends not only on the hardness of the particles ingested, but also on the presence of dust and other exogenous elements introduced during food processing.  Personally, I don't see dust making much of an effect on the surface of our teeth compared to seeds, but that's what studies are for.


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