Total sugar consumption and dental caries in Europe--an overview.

Sugar is the principal substrate for microorganisms causing dental caries. Positive correlations between caries prevalence and total sugar consumption in cross-sectional comparisons between different countries have been shown. This overview aims to relate caries prevalence at the age of 12 years to the total sugar consumption/person in 1970 and 1980 in European countries and also to give information about the trends in the two variables. Nationally representative oral health surveys have been quite rare and only a few studies on sugar consumption were identified. Nevertheless, there seemed to be a clear general trend of decreasing dental caries with only a minor decrease in total sugar consumption in the European countries studied.