Nutrients and Cranial Structure: A Preliminary Study

Objectives: The importance of nutrition for our health, both during development and ageing is worldwide recognized. We are used to mainly consider the biochemical, rheological and tribological aspects thinking that the dental world is mainly involved with sugar. Indeed dentists are directly involved if we consider the role of the bolus consistency and the related, muscular activation and forces, which exert a fundamental action for development and craniofacial growth.
To this aim, in this preliminary study we tested a questionnaire to evaluate the nutritional habits of subjects classified according to their cranial structure.
Methods: Fifty-two subjects with malocclusions (25M, 27F; 11.7 y.o.) referring to the Orthodontic Department of the University of Turin (Italy) for orthodontic diagnosis were consecutively selected for the study and divided into 3 groups (low-meso-high maxillary divergency), according to their cephalometric maxillary divergency (SpP^GoGn= 20° ± 5°).
The survey was conducted giving a questionnaire to patients’ parents about children’s eating and nutrition habits.
According to children habits during monthly intake, parents had to mark a list of 32 suggested foods, 16 of soft consistency (S) and 16 of hard consistency (H). For statistical analysis, a multivariate analysis (multiple linear regression) was conducted to verify the influence of covariates (hard or soft foods) on the dependent variable (maxillary divergency).
Results: The statistical analysis did not show significant differences among the groups (p>0.05), but it was relevant that there was a general choice of soft food (75% soft food, 61% hard food) especially among mesodivergent group who showed a significant preference of soft food (p=0.0245).
Conclusions: The future direction of this research will be to increase the number of the study sample to highlight a food plan which may help the psycho-physical development of the growing subjects.