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Dental Caries in the Cotton Rat

XI. The Effect of Feeding a Natural Diet Comparable to a Human Diet¹

Departments of Biochemistry and Home Economics, College of Agriculture, University of Wisconsin, Madison

A natural diet containing foods found frequently in the human diet and only 17% sucrose, the proportion consumed by the average person in the United States, produced as many and as severe carious lesions in the cotton rat as did a basal cariogenic diet with 67% sucrose. Increasing the sucrose level in the diet to 32% or 47% at the expense of the cereal and bread portion did not appreciably affect the incidence or extent of caries. Reducing the sucrose level of the diet to 0% or 2% reduced the occurrence of caries by 80% and 60,% respectively.

When the 14.6% dry whole milk was omitted from the diet and liquid whole milk was given separately as the animals' only source of fluid, the same caries scores were obtained as were obtained when natural diet 834 was fed ad libitum without liquid milk.

Substituion of 36% white bread for dextrin in a moderately cariogenic diet did not appreciably affect the cariogenicity of this ration when it was fed to cotton rats.

² Present address: Department of Home Economics, University of Kansas, Lawrence.

Manuscript received 16 September 1949.