Dentists should be at the forefront in the fight against sugar
Sugar is the new tobacco.1
All efforts should be made to reduce sugar consumption. Education and
governmental regulations alone cannot reduce consumption. A
multisectorial approach is required using all possible routes: whole
population, high-risk group, and targeted population approaches.2
Decreases
in tobacco consumption have arguably flowed from the introduction of
legislation (a whole population approach) and smoking cessation in
clinics (a targeted population approach).3 We should consider the use of similar approaches to combat the threat posed by sugar.
Whole
population approaches to control sugar consumption such as legislation
and partnership with manufacturers have been attempted;4
however, few efforts have been made for a targeted population
approach—eg, sugar cessation programmes at the individual level similar
to smoking cessation.
Evidence supports
the effectiveness of tobacco cessation services delivered via dental
health-care practitioners. Tobacco cessation services delivered in
public dental clinics have the potential to improve the health and
wellbeing of millions of people globally.5 Dentists are well positioned to play an important part in reducing sugar consumption just as they do for smoking cessation.6
Dental
caries is one of the earliest consequences of sugar consumption.
Dentists have a strategic position to identify risk early in life and
take preventive measure. Early detection of high sugar consumption in
children is very important; children are the main targets of marketing
campaigns for sweet products. Added sugar has found its way into almost
all food, and the use of sugar as a means to calm, entertain, or reward
children has become normalised, whereas sugar should be an occasional
treat.
At the individual level, reducing
sugar consumption can be particularly challenging. Estimation of
individuals sugar intake can be difficult: food products labelling is
often unclear.
Effectiveness,
cost-effectiveness, and feasibility of sugar cessation programmes in
dental clinics need to be established, and more reasearch is needed.
According to the Healthy lives, healthy peoplereport
from the Department of Health, if sugar consumption could be reduced by
30% within the next 5 years, the obesity epidemic could be stopped and
the benefits for individuals and countries could be enormous. According
to the Tackling obesities: future choices projectreport, the obesity epidemic costs the UK £5 billion a year, potentially rising to £50 billion by 2050.8
Therefore, it is crucial to use dentists' strategic position to help
controlling sugar consumption as a targeted population approach from
early childhood to later in life.
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