Comment by Speedy218
20 days ago
> but now it is “overmedicating” a vulnerable fraction of the population.
Makes sense, but the intention also is that many people do not brush their teeth, or at least do not brush them as often as they should, and so fluoride is added to drinking water to compensate so people's teeth don't start to fall out at an alarming rate.
Sadly, an alarming percentage of Americans don't drink water. I’ve spoken to way too many people who think water tastes wrong because it’s not sweet enough.
I've heard this and it doesn't fit in my brain. They never drink water? Ever?
Time to buy Brawndo shares
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Something like 10% of SNAP benefits go towards purchases of soda pop and other sugary drinks made by PepsiCo/etc.
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I wouldn't find that unusual. I hardly ever drink water; if it's available, I drink milk. Why would you drink water?
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Particularly when traveling, I don't enjoy the taste of tap water. Filtered or (factory filtered then) bottled... and I'm not alone in that viewpoint.
Probably because the overwhelming majority of countries chlorinates their water to various degrees because they don't have the exceptional plumbing quality needed to otherwise guarantee potability.
Countries where the tap water is drinkable without chlorination have quality that exceeds bottled water, and it might even be sourced from the same aquifers.
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When travelling where? The blanket statement here just doesn't work. Every major area has very different water in the tap. A lot of the bottled water is just tap water from another region.
This is one benefit of growing up with awful well water. Literally anywhere tastes pretty darn good by comparison!
When traveling by vehicle (pickup truck for me) I've thrown in a 5 gallon cooler of water from home. It was so nice to want to drink water because it was my own good well water that tastes like I'm used to.
When I had to fly to NY for work I felt like I couldn't get water anywhere that was worth drinking.
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Wisconsin tap water tastes fine. Waco, Texas tap water is really nasty.
It can vary much more closely than that. I moved from one town to another 12 miles away, and the tap water in the new town tasted horrible compared to my old town's tap.
I bet those people drink fountain drinks, cofee, tea, etc. made from tapwater.
Maybe instead of removing fluoride from the water they should add sweetener in there along with it /s
I'm pretty sure that no amount of fluoridated water is going to save you if you do not brush your teeth.
Even if the fluoride somehow manages to overcome all that and prevent you from getting cavities, the gum disease will eventually cause all your teeth to fall out.
> many people do not brush their teeth
many? (!!!)
Googling it all I found was one dentist website that said 2%, but didn't seem that reliable
Important sentence is "..or at least not as often as they should" :)
I have no doubt most people brush their teeth in one capacity or another, but do you really think 98% of people brush them regularly and sufficiently? I reckon that drops down quite a few double digits at that point, and since we're talking about populations here that's quite a lot of people.
If that figure is for the US, then that's ~7M people. Feels like "many" to me.
2% is definitely many