What do adults give their children to drink. There are many drinks that are geared toward children. Kool-aid is probably the most popular. Yes, there are unsweetened versions and parents should encourage their children to drink unsweetened drinks, or better yet, parents should encourage their children to drink water.
Carbonated soft drinks are another problem, however, Coke is trying to discourage drinking soft drinks containing sugar. The Department of Cariology, Restorative Sciences, and Endodontics, School of Dentistry, University of Michigan has done a study on children drinking soft drinks and their study suggests high consumption of carbonated soft drinks by young children is a risk indicator for dental caries in the primary dentition and should be discouraged.
Coke and Kool-aid are given to all classes of children, high-income, low-income and middle income, so assuming that these products are causing dental caries in low-income may or may not be appropriate information.
Low Income individuals consume more sugar sweetened drinks
However, there have been studies on diets of low-income people and we find that their diets are less than of nutritional quality. Low-income people seem to be high on a study done in Detroit on low-income African American children suggests that children who consumed more soft drinks, relative to milk and 100% fruit juice, as they grew older were at a greater risk of developing dental caries, according in the Department of Operative Dentistry at the College of Dentistry at the University of Iowa.
This study was complimented with another study that NCBI, National Center for Biotechnological Information reported. The latter study indicated that caries was extensive, with 82.3% of the 1,021 participants. This population had severe caries, poor oral hygiene, and diets that are high in sugars and fats and low in fruits and vegetables. Apart from tap water, the most frequently consumed food item by adults of all ages was soft drinks. Nearly three quarters of the adult participants were overweight or obese. The study participants were low-income African-American adults, residents of Detroit Michigan, with household incomes below 250% of the federally-established poverty level.
Low Income individuals consume low amounts of fruits and vegetables
This information is not only applicable to the U.S., but also other countries. England, for example has found that poorer women are more likely to eat low amounts of fruits and vegetables, whole grains and fish, and higher amounts of sugar and sweetened drinks compared with more affluent women.
Dietary advice should be given by dental health professionals to advice people to increase the consumption of starchy staple foods (eg bread, potatoes and unsweetened cereals), vegetables and fruit to reduce the consumption of sugary and fatty foods, states the School of Dental Sciences at Newcastle University in England.
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