Eating Habits and Their Relationship to Oral Health Tenelanda López, Dennys Valdivia Moral, Pedro Angel Castro Sánchez, Manuel Eating habits Dental caries DMFT index The objective of this research was to compare the healthy behaviors and caries index of young people in school to obtain an overview of their lifestyles, which would enable the development of educational programs for the promotion of oral health. The study design was carried out using a descriptive, cross-sectional, and observational methodology with a mixed approach. 380 twelve-year-old students participated in this research conducted in the city of Riobamba-Ecuador. The techniques used were observational and surveys with their respective instruments, the Dental Clinical History, and the Health Behavior in School-aged Children 2014-Spain questionnaire. The community index of the Decayed, Missing due to caries, and Filled Teeth (DMFT) reflected a high level (6.47) in the study subjects. A variety of foods such as fruits, chips, vegetables, candy, sugar-containing drinks, meat, fish, dairy, and cereals were consumed at least once a week by most students. Two statistically significant associations were demonstrated in this investigation. The first one was between fruit consumption and the DMFT index, the second one was between vegetable consumption and the DMFT index. Both associations showed significant values (p) of 0.049 and 0.028, respectively; these were not determining indicators since caries is a multifactorial pathology, which can develop not only as a product of poor eating habits. 2020-12-04T11:02:25Z 2020-12-04T11:02:25Z 2020-08-27 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Tenelanda-López, D., Valdivia-Moral, P., & Castro-Sánchez, M. (2020). Eating Habits and Their Relationship to Oral Health. Nutrients, 12(9), 2619. [doi:10.3390/nu12092619] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/64672 10.3390/nu12092619 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España Mdpi