I would assume there is not - the calcium you ingest while you are growing up and your adult teeth are coming in is more important. Or do children of mothers whose nutrition was poor during pregnancy tend to have worse teeth?
Correlation probably yes, but remember that correlation does not imply causation. I would think that the following effect is plausible: A household whose members eat well and healthy is more likely to be a wealthy and educated household, which makes it more likely that children born to such a family will, in adult life, be wealthy and educated themselves. This, in turn, makes it more likely that they will have good teeth. Such an effect would be enough to explain any correlation there might be.
As to whether there’s a direct causal link between mother’s nutrition (cause) and healthy adult teeth (effect): I don’t know.
I realise this is a little early to post anecdotes in a FQ thread, but… I have never had a filling. Never had my teeth capped. My brother and sister followed in my mother’s path, they each have several, and caps.
My only weird tooth issue was resolved when my mother had the dentist remove my extremely long thin “dracula” canines - removal of teeth is cheaper than braces. Which act could be seen as a good thing, or a bad thing…
…flys away like a bat.
We lived in an area with high levels of calcium in the tapwater.
When do our permanent, adult teeth form? I’d think after the child is born so there is room in the jaw to fit them in as the child grows.
According to this (and, though I am no dentist) the adult teeth start forming at childbirth.
start to develop in the jaws around birth and continue into childhood .
I am sure genetics play a large part and good nutrition coupled with the avoidance of tooth-rotting sugar in infancy are the main factors in the formation of healthy adult teeth.
I was born in England during WW2 and for the first ten years of my life sugar was restricted by rationing. I attribute this to the fact that I still have most of my own teeth.
As it happens I went to my dentist yesterday and at the end of the appointment the dentist told me that while good oral hygiene and proper professional dental care is important there is no guaranteed outcome because, sometimes, genetics trumps all that. It’s still worth doing proper care as it can mitigate a lot of problems but, sometimes even the best care and hygiene will not be enough in the long run.
Since I was adopted as a child I have no idea what’s in store for me but I certainly do the basic care I can at home.
Current understanding of epigenetics tells us that there are clear paths by which maternal nutrition might affect almost any part of the child.
A quick search for “epigenetics teeth” turns up quite a few papers on the subject. The answer would appear to be a pretty strong “yes”.
Definitely some forms of correlation, although a lot of them are spurious in the sense that they don’t stem from the kind of connection that the person posing the question might be contemplating. I will posit that if your mom didn’t eat any food during the month before you were born, you will never have good teeth. That’s largely because you will not survive anywhere near long enough to have teeth.
If your mom had excellent nutrition she probably had a reliable source of good nutrition, indicating that as you grow up you’ll have access to it too, and your teeth will benefit from that, and also from the excellent dental care that people with access to excellent nutrition are more likely to have.
This is not intended to imply that an embryo / fetus can’t benefit from good maternal nutrition in a manner that results directly in them having better teeth throughout their life. Just that it’s a challenge to control for all the spurious connections that don’t really show that.
Dentist here. I know tetracycline crosses the placenta and can stain the teeth as they form. The permanent incisors and first molars often, but not always start to calcify in utero. I am sure that other issues from the mom have an effect on children’s teeth.