Consumption of sweet snacks and caries experience of primary school children

With the aim of evaluating the relationship between consumption of sweet snacks (sugars) and caries prevalence, a secondary analysis was performed on data obtained in an epidemiological study of 5-, 8- and 11-year-old children, all participants of Regional Institutions for Youth Dentistry. The children's primary and permanent teeth were examined mainly by visual examination. Parents completed a questionnaire on the child's toothbrushing habits, use of fluoride tablets and fluoride toothpaste, consumption of sweet snacks, level of education of the mother as an indicator of the socio-economic status of the family and country of birth of the mother as an indicator of ethnicity. The various oral hygiene habits were combined into one variable. Firstly the crude relationship between consumption of sweet snacks and caries experience was evaluated, subsequently oral hygiene habits, socio-economic status and ethnicity were taken into account. Mean dmfs scores of 5- and 8-year-old children who consumed sweet snacks between meals more than 5 times a day (according to parents' reports) were significantly higher than mean dmfs scores of children with a lower reported sweet snack consumption. Multivariate analysis confirmed this result. Only 4.2% of the children were in the group with such a high sweet snack consumption. A number of parents probably underestimated the sweet snack consumption of their children. As the validity of the data on sweet snack consumption was questionable, the actual influence of this factor might be larger than the results of this study show.