Never has the dentistry profession had more state-of-the-art tools of the trade, in order to properly and professionally clean teeth, perform root canals, as well as tooth extractions, and all other types of procedures that are necessary in providing and aiding clients in having good healthy teeth and gums. You might think that with the modern fluoridation of water, as well as toothbrushes and toothpaste that most everyone utilizes on a consistent basis, mouthwashes of all sorts, and just the general knowledge that flossing, brushing, and cleaning of one's teeth leads to good results, would in the scheme of things, mean that there would be quite naturally, never so many with good healthy teeth and gums, but unfortunately, this isn't actually true.
To take a step back and to start at the beginning, primitive society did not have and could not avail themselves of the dentistry profession, nor toothbrushes, nor tooth paste, nor mouthwash, yet, though there was tooth decay in primitive societies; there was also, surprisingly, as demonstrated anthropologically in isolated societies; societies in which pretty much all the members of it, had healthy teeth. The only possible reason why this would be so, would have to come down to the very foods that people ate, of which, certain extensively studied primitive societies ate foods that did not contain sugars, or processed white flour, or processed foods of any sort. Instead, these people ate food indigenous to their culture such as fish, pork, chicken, and red meat, with only minute amounts of sugar ingested, primarily through natural fruits, and they did not have any notable tooth decay.
The primary reason why tooth decay is still existent and prevalent in today's society, has a lot to do, and probably can be successfully argued, everything to do, with sugar, in any of its myriad forms that is ingested into the body through the foods that people eat, day by day. Even though, many people are good about brushing their teeth, after a meal, or at appointed times of the day, the thing about foods such as carbohydrates that are highly processed and high in sugar, or sugary pop soda, is that as soon as that food is ingested, the acidic byproducts created by that food begins to inexorably erode the tooth enamel, in which, this action, repeated often enough, will in a significant amount of cases, produce some form of tooth decay.
Further to the point, those that do not brush their teeth, or have rather poor dental hygiene, and are also consuming a fair amount or more of sugary snacks and processed foods, as well as soda pop, are going to find that the acid created by those sugars will surely eat away at their tooth enamel. The real reason why dentists and the dentistry industry is still so busy and occupied today, despite all of the toothbrushes, toothpaste, dental floss, and mouthwash bought, is because the diet of modern mankind, too often, is one of consuming foods that are not only physically not beneficial for the body, but are definitely damaging to the teeth and its enamel. It is quite unfortunate, that while sugary sweets may taste quite good to most people, the effects of sugar, which are first seen in the damage to our tooth enamel, clearly is not good, and further that the effects of sugar on the interior of our body, must too, not be good at all.