Abstract
The role of nutrition counseling and education for well patients is an important part of the duties of dental health care team members (1-3). Many dental schools now offer formal courses in nutrition for dental and dental hygiene students, and there is a large amount of nutrition education material available specifically for use in dentistry (4). The role of nutrition in caries prevention is welldocumented (5,6). Nutrition counseling and education in the dental care setting focus on evaluating a patient's diet for overall nutritional adequacy, not just for foods with a high sugar content, and on educating the patient in accordance with the nutritional guidelines set forth by the United States Departments of Agricultural (USDA) and Health and Human Services (DHHS), the American Heart Association, and the American Cancer Society. Although one method of providing nutrition education in the dental care setting is by having a registered dietitian join the dental health care team (7), the use of other educational approaches should also be explored. This report describes the use of a nutrition computer education program, developed by one of the authors (WBK), as a means of delivering nutrition education in the dental office reception area. The attitudes of dental patients and the effectiveness of this activity are described.
Published Version
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