Dental Care for Infants
Diet

Dietary choices affect the oral health as well as the general health and well being. It is recommended to establish good dietary practices by 12 months of age and maintain it throughout early childhood. Breast milk is superior in providing the best nutrition in infants.

Epidemiological research shows that human milk and breast-feeding of infants provide general health, nutritional, developmental, psychological, social, economic, and environmental advantages while significantly decreasing risk for a large number of acute and chronic diseases.

ECC may not arise from breast-feeding alone, breast milk is superior in providing the best possible nutrition to infants and, by itself, it is non-cariogenic.

Breast-feeding in combination with other high content carbohydrate foods is cariogenic.

Teaching the parents/caregiver the following preventive measures can help reduce the incidence of disease.

• Replace juice/sweet liquids with water
• Limit snacking (less than 3x per day)
• Replace high carbohydrate snacks with cheese and protein snacks