A recent study indicates that children living in the Himalayan mountain region in Nepal have lower levels of tooth decay than children living in suburban areas in the United States, despite the fact that people in the Himalayan mountain region in Nepal re

No one likes to go to the dentist. You can ask almost any child and that is what they will tell you. But dental care, regardless of personal dislike, is generally thought to be needed to keep teeth strong and healthy. The argument that regular dental care is not needed because the children living in the Himalayan mountain have lower levels of tooth decay seems to make absolute sense on the surface, but there are different explanations that could account for why the facts presented may not be at all indicative of a generalization about dental care.

The most obvious flaw in the argument is generalizing the entire view about dental care based on such a limited number of people. To make the argument, the author based it off of children living in the Himalayan mountain, hardly a large enough sample of everyone living outside of the United States, and on children living in suburban areas in the US, hardly representative of all children living in the country. Perhaps in reality, the amount of times that children living in the United States, not in suburban areas, receive dental care is actually the same as the number of times the children in the Himalayan mountain do, and if the suburban areas take a lot less space in the country than the other areas, perhaps statistics would show that all of the children in the US are similar to those in the himalayan in terms of number of visits. But then that begs the question, why do the children in the Himalayan have lower levels of tooth decay then, if, by this explanation, they receive the same amount of dental care?

One explanation that would be enough to entirely dismiss the argument about dental care by the end of the paragraph would be if one took into account the type of food that people living in the Himalayan mountain eat. Perhaps the people live in much worse economical circumstances, and so their diets consist of natural vegetables and grain. Perhaps the diets consist of much healthier food than the children in the United States (both in suburban areas and not). Even if one was to gather data that proved that all children in the U.S, not just in suburban areas, did see a dentist much more than the children in the Himalayan, this explanation about the type of food that the children eat might be enough to seriously undermine the argument. Maybe children in the United States eat food that is, generally, much more unhealthy. Maybe many childrens' diets consist of sugar and salt consumption at a large intake, while the Himalayan's children rarely ever eat such foods.

Perhaps even a better explanation, not only do the Himalayan children eat healthier, but perhaps there is some kind of plant or agricultural crop in the mountain that, when eaten, actually decreases tooth decay or causes some kind of dental improvement. Perhaps this special type of food is rare in the world, but very common in this mountain and most children consume it on a daily basis. Even if the children ate as unhealthy as the children in the US, even if they received little to no dental care, this special type of food was enough to improve their teeth, leading to the facts shown in the argument.

The argument that the author makes is ultimately a weak one because it makes such grand generalizations about the population and what it means for dental care. Not only might the author want to gather data on larger, more representative samples of children in both of those areas and in other countries, but data on the type of food consumed is also crucial before such statements are made.