Or they're at least a noble tradition stretching back through the millennia. That's what the University of Oregon found out after researching the issue extensively. And it's about time.
It's actually quite the subject of academic debate. The prevailing thought was that as societies shifted from hunter/gatherers to farming-based, the change in their diet led to an increase in cavities. Anthropologist John R. Lukacs agrees that women experienced an increasing number of cavities as a result of the societal shift, but not due to diet. Lukacs argues that the societal shift away from hunting and gathering led to increased sedentism and fertility. It was the increase in fertility that led to increased cavities more than anything else.
Did you know that women get more cavities than men? It was news to me, but I'm not really up on my orthodontic trivia. The idea that pregnancy leads to poor dental health was also a surprise, but not something I had spent a lot of time worrying about.
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