The Effect of Powdered Milk on Dental Caries in the Rat

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Abstract
The ingestion by growing rats of a coarse corn diet containing 30% of heat-processed whole-milk powder resulted in a significant increase in the incidence of occlusal dental caries when compared to results obtained with rats receiving an identical diet containing non-heat-treated whole-milk powder. When the rats received the heat-processed milk diet and in addition received daily supplements of whole-milk powder by stomach tube the dental caries increment as well as the pronounced failure to gain weight in these animals was returned to the level of the control. It is suggested that milk powder contains a heat-labile factor which confers some pronounced degree of anticariogenicity mediated by way of the systemic circulation.