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No, just raised poor in Appalachia on spring water (no floride) and a cultural expectation that false teeth and dieing in your 60s are normal.

• jessaustin 9y ago
  Sorry for the snippy response. In my (possible) defense, it was before your edit. The really sad thing is that while even well-cared-for teeth do fail eventually, that time is typically after one turns 70yo. I was also raised on spring water, but my well-informed parents made certain that we took vitamins that contained fluoride on a daily basis.
  • mixmastamyk 9y ago
    > vitamins that contained fluoride on a daily basis. Thought that flouride worked topically?
    • jessaustin 9y ago
      These are solid, chewable vitamins. Presumably the action of chewing is enough to handle the topical application? I think there was a prescription from a dentist, which presumably would prevent children who have fluoridated public water from overexposure to fluoride.
• wahern 9y ago
  To be fair, false teeth and dying in your 60s are normal in many parts of the U.S. Where I grew up people still put Dr. Pepper in baby bottles, and become grandfathers at 35. That sh*t doesn't just happen on TV. Though, now that I think about it, it's only in the past 30 or so years that soft drinks have become so cheap that people drink it almost exclusively. When I was a little kid poor families could only afford to drink watered-downed Kool-Aid, if that. So the soft drinks->bad teeth thing is probably a recent development, which fits with the increase in diabetes, too. Not just soft drinks, but the affordability of high caloric foods, generally. But false teeth were still far more common than even today.