HISTORY OF THE FIRST THANKSGIVING TEETH

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We don’t want to sit here obviously just stuffing our face with stuffing. 

We know Thanksgiving’s true history is a million times more tragic than the version we all learned in school.

And as it turns out, turkeys don’t care for it very much either.

But before we tuck into the meal of the century and all the family fun and squabbles, we had to get an important question out of the way first:

How did Native Americans and Pilgrims deal with their dental issues?

Wager-Evans Dental of Reno, Nevada, clues us into a few eye-opening facts about tooth care in the age of the Mayflower.

Now, since nobody back then could just waltz into a Rite-Aid and buy an Oral-B at a whim with their watches, nature and humankind’s craft ways would have to suffice. Apparently, salt was an early European forerunner to fluoride, used as an abrasive to clean one’s teeth, most likely with toothbrushes fashioned from hog’s hair and connected to a stick or fragment of bone.

It’s unlikely, however, that many Pilgrims had toothbrushes. They wouldn’t be widely produced or distributed for roughly another century. And if you weren’t a person of great wealth, you probably weren’t getting one.

The extensive world of Native communities across the Americas no doubt had as many ways to take care of their teeth as they had flourishing cultures. Pediatric dentists Steve Hogan and Natalie Harrison of Houston tell us that known methods include “chewsticks,” said to be a twig with one rock-frayed edge for brushing and chewing, and the other sharpened like a toothpick.

Pine needles and fresh herbs, including sage and cucacua, were also known to be chewed for cleaning and scrubbing the teeth, and some were deployed as breath fresheners.

One fascinating difference between Native American and Pilgrim tooth care is that Natives had generally much better teeth. They not only didn’t have the high-sugar or highly processed foods of today to confront, but subsisted on considerably more natural fruits, meats, and vegetables, which helped reduce plaque and strengthen tooth enamel.

The Pilgrims, meanwhile, arrived after a 66-day trip, surviving on salt-preserved meat, dried fruit, and the dry cracker known as hardtack, all of which are ruinous for the teeth. Perhaps worse, water wasn’t always safe for drinking. So ale and highly acidic wine was drunk instead, speeding up potential damage to the dents. So their teeth were… kinda gross.

As we tuck into our cranberry sauce and poultry and pumpkin pie and pinot noir and–our favorite–the mashed potatoes, let’s remember all of those that came before us. 

And more importantly, remember to floss and brush between pushing away from the table and the moment the tryptophan hits.