These days, Aussie kids get dressed up in ghoulish gear for the whole American trick or treat Halloween thing. I support there being more ritual in our lives and opportunities to don fancy dress – kids love it! However, as this is an oral health themed article I must use it to draw attention to a nasty fact affecting too many children. Sugar is far more scary than ghosts at Halloween according to dentists. Yes, it is a somewhat sad fact that we still have not got the message about the dangers of refined sugars in our diet.
Refined Sugars Ravaging Oral Cavities Like Lollies For Trick Or Treat
Natural teeth do not last the distance for most adults in terms of their life spans. This is not a failure of our anatomies and physiologies but our diets. Are we just too dumb to read the writing on the walls of our dental clinics? Are we congenitally too stupid to take heed of the cornucopia of evidence before our eyes? Old people shuffling along in the canned soup aisles at the supermarket. Super expensive dental bills for root canal therapy, crowns, dentures and dental implants. Unsmiling poor people everywhere you look. The trick or treat is all trick because if you consume those sweets it is the nastiest trick going around. A whole industry of unscrupulous folk make money out of sucking kids into consuming processed foods full of refined sugars. This is no treat for the kids or their parents. Even dentists who make their living out of fixing teeth don’t like seeing children with bad teeth from decay and neglect.
Scary Sugar Dissolving Teeth In Nasty Halloween Message From Children’s Dentists
“Aussie dentists have released shocking images showing just how much damage too much sugar can cause to young teeth. The Australian Dental Association (ADA) focused on three popular lollies and submerged extracted teeth into a solution of the sweet treat combined with water. In just 45 minutes, the decay process had begun with colour changes visible on the enamel. Twenty-four hours later there were holes in the tooth and within a week, it had deteriorated even further.
“They’re quite alarming. They show clearly what we see in the surgery,” Dr Angelo Papageorgiou from the SA Branch of the ADA told 9News.”
– 9News
Sugar is far more scary than ghosts at Halloween according to dentists. The takeaway can be that you can still have fun getting dressed up for Halloween but give the lollies garnered from trick or treat a miss. Perhaps, mum and dad can replace them with better alternatives later at home? Or how about informing your street of a no sugar policy for the next Halloween? Really the Australian government should get involved by running an awareness campaign about the dangers of refined sugar in diets for both our oral health and general wellbeing. Kids are not great at delaying gratification or doing stuff in moderation, which is why too many dentists see children attending their surgeries with too many cavities and really poor oral hygiene.
“Tooth decay, or ‘dental caries’, occur when acid from within the mouth attacks the enamel and dentine of the teeth causing holes or cavities to form. The acid is produced by bacteria that are found within the plaque – a sticky and thin film that repeatedly forms over the teeth. When sugar is consumed it interacts with the bacteria within the plaque to produce acid. This acid is responsible for tooth decay because it slowly dissolves the enamel creating holes or cavities in the teeth. Tooth decay can lead to tooth abscesses, which may result in the tooth having to be removed. “
– Action on Sugar
The State Of Play In Australia Re-Sugar
Sugar is also more scary than zombies at Halloween according to dentists. It is amazing to me that we live in a country where dental care is not included in Medicare but we do zilch about the scourge of poor oral health and the companies making crap food and drinks and promoting it shamelessly to our kids. A lack of political courage has been a hallmark of Australian governments over decades re-this issue. Obviously, the sugar lobby representing those that grow it and refine it have had their talons into the political parties via donations and scare campaigns. Perhaps, now that Labor has such a large majority it could stop being so timid and actually do something about this long standing health problem.
“Australians consume an average of a ½ kilo of sugar per week, much of it ‘hidden’ in high-sugar foods.
Approximately one in two Australians exceed the <10% recommendation and nine of ten exceed the <5% recommendation for free sugar intake. Consuming free sugars above the recommended levels is a leading cause for several preventable health problems such as overweight or obesity; type-2 diabetes; tooth decay, heart diseases and cancers. More than one-third of adults across all demographics, socioeconomic and health behaviour groups in Australia consume >10% of free sugars. Over half of young Australians consume >10% of free sugars from sugar-sweetened beverages.”
– Power to Persuade
Sugar Bad For Your Health & Soul
Sugar has a very nasty history, as it is directly associated with slavery on the sugar plantations and Australia has had its own forms of this involving indentured servants and such like. “Blackbirding saw Islanders grabbed and taken to Queensland to work on the sugar plantations. Recent debate in the United States over the legacy of slavery has reignited discussions about Australia’s own dark past. Starting from the 1860s, tens of thousands of Pacific Islanders were taken to Australia to work on plantations in Queensland, often by force or trickery.
Unmarked mass graves full of labourers who died on those plantations are still being uncovered today.”
– ABC.net.au
Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to the real history of things and the place you call home. Many millions of Indigenous people were worked to death in slavery, especially in the Caribbean where the entire Indigenous population was completely wiped out by disease and mistreatment by Europeans working them on their sugar plantations. Lots of modern folk like to look away but the bitter truth about sugar is indelible.
The History Of Halloween
“Halloween, also known as All Halloween, All Hallows’ Eve, or All Saints’ Eve, is celebrated every year on the 31st of October by many people all over the world. The modern-day Halloween is said to have originated from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, held around the 1st of November, the date that marked the transition from autumn to winter. It was at this time of year that people believed the boundary between the worlds of living and dead became blurred, and was when the souls of the dead were said to revisit their homes.
According to many scholars, All Hallows’ Eve is a Christian feast influenced by Celtic harvest festivals. Initially, it was practiced only in small Irish Catholic settlements, until thousands of Irish migrated to America during the great potato famine and brought their customs with them.”
– Cambridge School
Halloween A Supernatural Shakedown
The origins of Halloween trick or treating in America was actually driven by poor Irish immigrants dressing up and knocking on doors for food. Maybe it was a supernatural ‘shakedown’ of the neighbourhood. Thus, poverty was the mother of this invention and it has morphed over time into this ritualised event for children. In strict puritanical terms you could say it has been polluted by refined sugar and the commercialisation of something with very different intentions originally.
