Food Sweetening as a Risk Factor For Early Childhood Caries

Practice of sweetening regular food to enhance feeding in children has been anecdotally reported by parents. Practices include adding sugars, jams to staple foods such as chapati, roti and even rice. Since added sugars plays a major role in the etiology of Early Childhood Caries, the risk posed by such practices was investigated. In a cross sectional study, prevalance of ECC was checked with dmfs index while practie of food sweetening was part of the questionaire Children Eating Behaviour Questionairre for Early childhood Caries answered by parents with informed consent in four differnet centres of Bangalore, Dharwad, Raichur and Mangaluru. Prevalance of caries was 48.5% in th total sample. Nearly 50% of the sample reported practices of sweetening the food. Odd ratio reveled that children consuming sweetened food were 1.164 time more at risk for developing ECC. Hence the pediatric dentist should be aware of such practices and actively counsel the parent towards reduction of added sugars in the diet.