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Why didn't our ancient ancestors get cavities?

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Re: Why didn't our ancient ancestors get cavities?

#181

Post by cheese_goddess »

leobg wrote: post #157
ComradePhil wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not trolling. If you don't know how to prepare vegetables in indegenous culture that you got it from, you are better off not eating it. Also, even if you did follow indegenous preparation methods, the food industry may have changed the plant by artificial selection or genetic modification such that the indegenous preparation is not as effective, so you're better off ditching them anyway. Vegetables have si…

Indigenous preparation methods? Sounds interesting. I remember reading the book “Fatu Hiva” by Thor Heyerdahl, about the island of the same name in the Pacific. He mentions the custom of the inhabitants of fermenting breadfruit in the ground for several years before eating it. One indigenous man is quoted as saying that he cannot digest food unless he has a portion of fermented breadfruit with it. I haven’t tried it…

You should try it with lutefisk and century eggs! Sounds like a great combination.

Re: Why didn't our ancient ancestors get cavities?

#182

Post by leobg »

cheese_goddess wrote: post #181
leobg wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indigenous preparation methods? Sounds interesting. I remember reading the book “Fatu Hiva” by Thor Heyerdahl, about the island of the same name in the Pacific. He mentions the custom of the inhabitants of fermenting breadfruit in the ground for several years before eating it. One indigenous man is quoted as saying that he cannot digest food unless he has a portion of fermented breadfruit with it. I haven’t tried it…

You should try it with lutefisk and century eggs! Sounds like a great combination.

Great idea. Remind me in 8 years, will you?

Re: Why didn't our ancient ancestors get cavities?

#183

Post by mostertoaster »

dotancohen wrote: post #137
mostertoaster wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

This is absolute fiction presented as facts. If HN had a way to killfile a user this user would be first on my list. This type of misinformation has no place on HN.

Yes I can confirm it was a bad joke.

Personally I thought this whole thread was a joke. Glad I’d be first on your list though, I’m hardly ever first at anything.

Also COVID is fake, the earth is flat, 9/11 was an inside job, and now that you’ve shown desire to killfile(?) a supreme member of the Illuminati, well I don’t know what will happen, but it will probably be semi irritating.

Re: Why didn't our ancient ancestors get cavities?

#184

Post by denimnerd42 »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #124
dev-3892 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you're mid-30s you probably had an extra enamel coating applied to your teeth at some point that may be doing some pretty awesome work protecting your molars

why would someone in their mid 30s "probably had an extra enamel coating applied"? I've never heard of that. Of course, they give you “super fluoride” when you go in for cleanings, but that's not an extra coat of enamel. I'm pretty sure there is not such technique, when your adult teeth reach their full size that's pretty much all the enamel they'll ever have, dentists can't just apply another layer or we'd all be ca…

it's usually called a dental sealant and yes I did have that when my adult teeth came in. it's all chipped off by now but we'll see the next 10 years I guess.

my childhood dentist said at 18 that if I just regularly take care of my teeth I shouldn't have any issues the rest of my life.

Re: Why didn't our ancient ancestors get cavities?

#185

Post by dotancohen »

mostertoaster wrote: post #183
dotancohen wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolute fiction presented as facts. If HN had a way to killfile a user this user would be first on my list. This type of misinformation has no place on HN.

Yes I can confirm it was a bad joke. Personally I thought this whole thread was a joke. Glad I’d be first on your list though, I’m hardly ever first at anything. Also COVID is fake, the earth is flat, 9/11 was an inside job, and now that you’ve shown desire to killfile(?) a supreme member of the Illuminati, well I don’t know what will happen, but it will probably be semi irritating.

You forgot the moon landing, filmed on a soundstage on Mars. ))

Re: Why didn't our ancient ancestors get cavities?

#186

Post by nwah1 »

ComradePhil wrote: post #141
skrebbel wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop eating vegetables? Tbf i can't figure out whether you're trolling or not.

Definitely not trolling. If you don't know how to prepare vegetables in indegenous culture that you got it from, you are better off not eating it. Also, even if you did follow indegenous preparation methods, the food industry may have changed the plant by artificial selection or genetic modification such that the indegenous preparation is not as effective, so you're better off ditching them anyway. Vegetables have si…

Food in general is a poison that is slowly killing you via the byproducts of metabolism.

Meat that is raw puts you at great risk for food-borne illness. Meat that is cooked is full of carcinogens and advanced glycation end products. Almost all meat readily available in the West has very high levels of hormones, bioaccumulated pesticides at higher levels than plants, etc.

Re: Why didn't our ancient ancestors get cavities?

#187

Post by User23 »

monocasa wrote: post #98
VerminOctopus1 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in the same boat. I’ve eaten a lot of junk in my life (standard North American trash diet), and have never had a cavity or any serious dental issue in my life. I also get a cleaning every 6 months at the dentist. I’d be shocked if the likelihood of developing a cavity didn’t have a large genetic component.

My guess is that it's mainly the composition of your mouth's microbiome. Some bacteria really like creating acid that eats away at enamel. Some don't. Whichever happens to have a foothold in your mouth (which probably has a very inherited component) is probably the determining factor in tooth decay.

I've sometimes wondered if dental hygiene may actually be counterproductive by killing harmless or even beneficial bacteria and leaving a niche open for harmful ones.

Re: Why didn't our ancient ancestors get cavities?

#188

Post by wyager »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #77
wyager wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just sugar - any carbohydrate which a bacterium can easily metabolize to sugar (i.e. most of them) is a hazard. Grains, tubers, etc. are all dangerous from a dental perspective and have only been consumed in calorically significant quantities after the advent of agriculture.

You're correct that any carbs can help form plaque, but humans have been getting significant numbers of calories from them since before we were H. sapiens.

This is only plausible for humans in tropical areas. It does not stand to reason for humans north of (conservatively), say, 40º. Even in humans in areas with calorically significant quantities of carbohydrates available, fossil records suggest they probably preferentially ate ruminants, same as anyone else.

Re: Why didn't our ancient ancestors get cavities?

#189

Post by AlotOfReading »

wyager wrote: post #188
AlotOfReading wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct that any carbs can help form plaque, but humans have been getting significant numbers of calories from them since before we were H. sapiens.

This is only plausible for humans in tropical areas. It does not stand to reason for humans north of (conservatively), say, 40º. Even in humans in areas with calorically significant quantities of carbohydrates available, fossil records suggest they probably preferentially ate ruminants, same as anyone else.

Most of human evolution occurred below 40N, so even if that point were correct, it would at best be limited to the adaptive behaviors of a very small group of human ancestors.

However, there's plenty of evidence suggesting that there wasn't any such regionally adaptive behavior. The original find that suggested starchy plant consumption in H. erectus was analysis of the Dmanisi fossils at ~41N. Later work tying these sorts of results to typical European Neanderthal diets has been done for North Sea sites (~50N). Of course, Neanderthals never went much farther north than that due to the climate. As for AMHs, I've seen papers of sites near Smolensk (~55N) indicating moderate to heavy starchy plant use. That's not far from the glaciation line.

Moreover, there are fairly convincing arguments that a nearly pure-meat diet doesn't work in winter due to the general lack of fat (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.11.016 ). There are caveats and workarounds here, but this whole idea that high-latitude hominins had limited, homogeneous diets is on increasingly shaky ground.

Re: Why didn't our ancient ancestors get cavities?

#190

Post by cheese_goddess »

manytree wrote: post #179
victorclf wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weston A Price is an infamous quack. I'm disappointed to see he mentioned positively here. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/sbm-weston-prices-appalling...

Be careful throwing around the word quack. Among The “SkepDoc’s” oppositions to the Weston Price foundation’s website are these assertions: > [That weston price offered] Advice not supported by good evidence, like using unrefined Celtic sea salt, cooking only in stainless steel, cast iron, glass, or good quality enamel, thinking positive thoughts, and practicing forgiveness. > Dangerous advice: drinking raw milk and…

Yes, advising people to drink raw milk and avoid pasteurization is dangerous advice. Raw milk and dairy is a common source of food-borne illnesses. Pasteurisation is the main reason why consuming milk and dairy products at the scale we do doesn't cause thousands of deaths every year.

Here:

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/food-safety

tl;dr raw milk and dairy is the main source of infection with Campylobacter, enterotoxic E. coli and Listeria.

I could also add a few other typical zoonoses caused by raw milk and dairy, off the top of my head: bovine tuberculosis, Brucellocis, Q-Fever, Staphylococcus aureus, various Clostridia etc.

I don't get it to be honest. Back in the day, people didn't know anything about microbes, so there was no reason for them not to drink milk raw. Today, we know a lot more. And yet, people keep following bizzarre nutrition fads that essentially seek to take us back to primitive times, when we didn't understand anything about microbes and disease, and didn't even know how to cook our food to make it safe to eat. It's like some kind of strange, self-destructive atavism, as if the discovery of fire itself never happened. It's incomprehensible and stupid and sad like a cult of Cthulhu.

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