Effect of sweet biscuits on the incidence of dental caries in rats

Abstract

1. Biscuits baked to a recipe requiring only sucrose, white flour and water were ground to a powder and mixed with the remaining ingredients of a standard rat diet. The control diet contained the same dry-weight amounts of all ingredients, but the sucrose and flour were not baked into biscuits. Eighty-four rats were divided into two matched groups and fed on the diets for 8 weeks from weaning.2. The biscuit diet produced significantly more caries than the control diet, with a total of about twice as many lesions, and also many more advanced lesions. Nearly all the lesions were in the molar fissures, suggesting that the cooked and powdered biscuit was impacted and retained in the fissures.