Oral Health

The Department of Health has included oral health as part of a bigger programme of public health initiatives to ensure healthier lifestyles are more easily adopted. Choosing a Better Diet (DoH, 2005) emphasised the need to reduce sugar consumption to 11%. Choosing Better Oral Health (DoH, 2005) recognised the common risk factor approach (Sheiman, 2000) i.e. that chronic diseases such as obesity, stroke, cancers etc and oral disease have a common risk. A poor diet, combined with smoking and heavy alcohol consumption together contributes to the development of different chronic diseases as already mentioned.