While sweet drinks and snacks aren’t recommended for children, a new study has found no significant association between their consumption patterns and the development of early childhood caries (ECC) in low-income children under the age of two.
Published July 13 in BMC Oral Health, the study followed 127 Medicaid-eligible children from birth at two university-affiliated clinics in upstate New York. Researchers tracked dietary habits and oral health outcomes to explore how early food and drink choices might influence ECC.
“Despite identifying distinct snack and drink consumption patterns among young children from underserved communities, no significant association was observed between these patterns and the onset of ECC, highlighting the multifactorial nature of ECC,” the study authors wrote.
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All participants were Medicaid-eligible
Dietary data were collected through structured questionnaires at 12, 18, and 24 months. Snacks and drinks were grouped by their potential to cause cavities, and researchers used latent class analysis to identify consumption patterns. Multinomial regression models were then used to examine the relationship between dietary patterns and ECC diagnosis.
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Three distinct patterns emerged:
- Medium sweet + medium non-sweet
- Low sweet + high non-sweet
- High sweet + medium non-sweet
No pattern was found to significantly increase the risk of ECC by 24 months.
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Call for more research
The researchers recommended future multi-site studies involving children from more diverse cultural, environmental, and socioeconomic backgrounds. They also emphasized the need for long-term studies using repeated dietary assessments and accounting for other factors such as oral hygiene, fluoride exposure, and microbial composition.
These findings suggest that while diet plays a role in oral health, other factors may be more critical in determining which children develop cavities at an early age.