Dental Caries in the Cotton Rat

Abstract

The ingestion of diets in which starch or dextrin had been substituted for sucrose resulted in a low incidence and extent of dental caries in the cotton rat as compared with those found after ingestion of the control sucrose ration. Diets in which 10 parts of lard had been added at the expense of the carbohydrate gave some protection as compared with the low fat, sucrose ration. No difference was observed in the effects of glucose, dextri-maltose, or sucrose in these lard rations. With sucrose rations containing 10 parts of lard, increasing the protein level at the expense of the remaining carbohydrate further reduced the caries occurrence.