Comment by abxyz
19 days ago
You're misattributing: the U.S. has a perfect white teeth culture that doesn't exist elsewhere. Many people outside of the U.S. have healthier but uglier teeth. Fluoride isn't the reason for good/bad teeth inside/outside of the U.S, it's cultural. Many places outside of the U.S. do put fluoride in their water (nationally or regionally) and have "bad" teeth (e.g: England).
People in the U.S. don't have perfect white teeth, they have are cosmetic procedures on their teeth equivalent to liposuction, silicone, botox, hair plugs and/or laminated face.
I think that's exactly what the GP meant when they said "perfect white teeth culture".
Perfect white teeth doesn't mean they're healthy.
What does a white-tooth culture look like specifically? People brush their teeth in France, they have modern dentristy etc.
People don't bleach their teeth much outside the US as far as I know. You can see it especially well with US actors, their teeth looking like the someone photoshopped them to #FFFFFF
Those are actually veneers. They grind down their real teeth into basically fence posts to use as a structure to glue fake teeth on them.
https://davidfisherdds.com/how-long-does-it-take-for-porcela...
Others note the bleaching, which is relatively low cost, but the (purely cosmetic) straightening is probably the more interesting example.
People in the US pay a lot of money to have very straight teeth. You can see this clearly with American celebrities and actors (versus European counterparts), but the culture of cosmetically modifying teeth is very strong all across "middle class" and up America as well.
Way more people having their teeth whitened? Braces being more popular.
Bleaching your teeth, specifically.
US people wear facades to hide their teeth.
*A significant minority of...
While tooth whiteness in the US is often divorced from tooth health, fluoride does add a yellowish tint to your teeth, so the healthiest teeth — those imbued with fluoride — are slightly yellow. (In fact when they first decided to add fluoride to water, one of the questions was just how much they could add before your teeth would turn completely yellow. Health-wise the yellowing was fine, but it was obviously visually unappealing.) Ugly teeth may be due to poor/lack of orthodontia, but it's probably not due to better dental care.