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Dental caries (or tooth decay) is our most prevalent disease, and hardly anyone living in present‐day Britain is completely free from it. More than 99% of the population have had teeth attacked by decay, sometimes so severely that a large proportion of their teeth have had to be extracted. The result of dental caries combined with gum disease is that 37% of all the people over 16 in England and Wales are edentulous (i.e. have had all their teeth extracted), while the figure for Scotland is even higher at 44%.

A tremendous amount of effort has gone into the search for such compounds, usually with the aid of ‘screening’ techniques in which the potential agents are added to cariogenic diets fed to laboratory animals, and any effect on the level of caries is compared with that of a control group fed on the basic unsupplemented diet. A whole book has been compiled on the subject with different contributors reviewing progress in various classes of chemicals for which caries‐protective claims have been made.

The state of the teeth of the population of the U.K. presents an appalling picture, with more than 99% of us suffering or having suffered from dental caries (decay) and a repair bill of more than £140 million per annum in England alone. By the age of 15 on average more than one‐third of the permanent teeth of every child are either decayed, missing or filled as a consequence of dental caries.

For one reason or another, different communities develop certain life‐styles, with particular characteristics in eating as in many other day‐to‐day activities. Eating patterns may be determined by such factors as: