Avoiding good dental hygiene

My friend Luanne noticed this sentence from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration:

The best way to prevent cavities in children is by avoiding excessive sugar intake and good dental hygiene, not by altering a child’s microbiome.

Maybe we can rewrite the sentence:

The best way to prevent cavities in children is by avoiding excessive sugar intake and practicing good dental hygiene, not by altering a child’s microbiome.

But there’s still a problem, because practicing good dental hygiene itself alters a child’s microbiome.

“Alters a child’s microbiome”: such a sinister sound to those words, no? But eating and drinking themselves alter one’s micobiome. Pass the ketchup, please.

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If you read the comments, you’ll see why I’ve come back to this post. Readers have pointed out two more problems with the sentence:

Does it bother you at all that the person or persons who are being addressed, the ones who would seek to prevent cavities, are being advised to avoid excess sugar intake? Surely it’s sugar intake by the children that should be reduced.

And:

How about “altering a child’s microbiome for the worse” or “degrading a child’s microbiome” or “unbalancing a child’s microbiome”?

Yes, and yes.

And nowI see yet another problem with the original sentence: avoiding sugar and practicing good hygiene are things one can do to avoid cavities, but altering (or degrading or unbalancing) the biome is an effect of something that can be done, if indeed it is an effect of adding fluoride to drinking water.

And it occurs to me now that “cavities in children” sounds strange. Here’s another try:

Avoiding excessive sugar and practicing good dental hygiene are the best ways to prevent cavities. Unbalancing a child’s microbiome is not.

[My attention in this post was to a mess of a sentence. But it’s important to know that according to a 2023 paper, “There is no conclusive evidence that community water fluoridation (CWF) at WHO recommended concentrations for caries prevention has any harmful effects.” And according to that same paper, “fluoride[-]containing oral hygiene products may have beneficial effects on the oral microbiome regarding caries prevention.”]