Korean Teeth

Korean Children have really bad teeth. I can't really understand it. I mean I know why they have bad teeth, they have more sugar in their diets than a hummingbird. I think it would take a concentrated effort to get more sugar into their systems. Maybe if they put coca-cola in their humidifiers and breathed it in all day they could get a little more in.

Before you decry me as a hypocrite keep in mind that I have long since reformed my candy-giving discipline system for my classes. As in I don’t do it anymore, now their prize is notapunch. I can't tell you what that is, but I'm glad to show you what it isn't. Now to be fair I can't really compare to back home as I haven't spent much time around Canadian kids recently either, not because I'm afraid of being accused of being a pedophile - I just never get much out of the conversations. But at least back home people seem more aware of the cause and effect of high candy intake, fat and bad teeth. Here I have to listen to the director explaining that diabetes is on the rise because people eat too much meat (which may be a factor for all I know, but I bet the sugar has more to do with it). Maybe its just that the public water here isn't fluoridated. Or maybe it is , no one drinks it anyway so it really doesn't matter. The toothpaste isn't fluoridated either. I think there’s fluoride in the green tea, but that drink is falling out of popularity.

I bought some instant decaf coffee and some ginger tea the other day only to find that both of them are loaded with sugar. I specifically grabbed them so I would have something to drink when I was writing blogs that wouldn't keep me up. That only applies a little to the topic at hand but it pissed me off so I wanted to mention it.

In any case the reason it surprises me that kids have such bad teeth is that the adults don't really seem to. Usually crooked and stuff but not as bad as the kids. Now I don't know how aggressively the candy companies (liquid and otherwise) have been marketing here in the last 10 years or so but it's probably a lot. There are almost all the candy bars you know from home, and then some local flavors. The kids never seem to get any dental work done, almost all have visible plaque and tons of gaping cavities. Keep in mind that the kids I see are not poor kids, if anything the kids I teach at the elementary school (usually lower middle class) have better teeth and the best were the ones at the orphanage.

Well the catalyst fr this entry was one of my kids who was chewing some kind of gum and lost a metal crown. Or i guess it was a crown, what remained in her mouth was little more than a root and exposed central tissue. It was far from pretty, but at least it showed that there is some dental work that does go on here, and shoddy work at that. My original guess was that these parents figure that there’s no point in patching a few leaks when the boat is sinking so they don't bother with baby teeth. But then you get your adult front teeth at the age of 9 at the latest and there are kids older than that with cavities.

Anyway it may seem like a weird topic for a blog, but it really struck me as odd. I've always been paranoid about my teeth. I used to get those recurring dreams where my teeth would fall out and I know that psychologist say that’s a fear of maturing. For me it was just a real fear of losing all my gorram teeth. To think that a country like Korea where they are so wrapped up in plastic surgery, and dressing well and presenting a well polished exterior that they don't fix teeth in kids is odd. But then the parents could just be saving up for some huge reconstruction later in life. Although completely unexpected this is the type of cultural differences I am experiencing.

I'll post more developments on this story as time goes on, whether anyone wants to hear about it or not. Right now I think I'm going to go try to buy some real instant decaf.