Letters: Treaty claims and tooth decay

About 1500 rotten teeth were pulled from the mouths of Bay children last year.Photo/Getty.

Tooth decay

Regarding the article about tooth decay in children (News, October 5)

In 1935 Weston Price, a senior American research dentist, examined many hundreds of elderly Māori having grown up on their ancestral diets as well as many skulls. He essentially found no dental decay (<1:2000) compared to upwards of 40 per cent in those on the Pakeha foods of commerce based on white flour and sugar. Notably, neither those on their ancestral diet had any access to fluoride. Sugar and especially sugar-laden drinks, cause dental decay and no amount of sugar industry lobbying to promote water fluoridation will change this.

Currently, the population is already being overdosed on fluoride from tea, toothpaste and water whether drunk or used to irrigate the land. A single supermarket teabag has more fluoride than 1L of fluoridated water, and covert musculoskeletal fluorosis is widespread as I revealed in the NZ Medical Journal.

Mike Godfrey
Tauranga

Treaty claims
Would you like to know the latest get rich quick scheme? A scheme with Government backing?

I think the Hauraki Collective and Marutuahu Collectives have hit the jackpot. How it works is the tribes make a claim to the Waitangi Tribunal all over the country in places that they have, in my view, no right to, but has all the most valuable real estate in New Zealand, like Auckland City and Tauranga. There is no requirement to prove your claim.

The Government then will sign a deal with you, as they did with the Hauraki Collective on August 2.

The tribes who have been claimed over will protest, but the collectives have, it seems, the Crown backing and are under the protection of the minister, Andrew Little.

"We have been seeking the chance to have our case heard in court for over two years, but the Crown has continually blocked us from doing so," said Ngāti Whātua deputy chair Ngarimu Blair.

Last month Ngāti Whātua lost its Supreme Court bid to have the unproven settlements with Marutuahu Collective declared invalid. Guess who is laughing all the way to the bank?

Patrick Nicholas
Tauranga