CHARLESTON — Rotting teeth and bulging stomachs tell Sen. Ron Stollings that something is terribly wrong with the West Virginia diet.

And to Stollings, the genesis is in the formative years when residents are in school.

A practicing physician, Stollings is pushing a bill in this session that would outlaw sugar-laden soft drinks and candy bars in schools, replacing them with healthy beverages, such as 100 percent fruit juices, high-fiber snacks and low-fat foods.

“We think this will have not only an impact on oral health, but also an impact on obesity,” Stollings said.

Besides ushering in the healthy foodstuffs, Stollings wants to see an increased emphasis on exercise.

“We think this is just crucial,” Stollings, D-Boone, said. “I know everyone is concerned about the loss of revenue from schools because of the vending machines. They’re afraid the kids aren’t going to buy enough soda, that if they buy soda now, they might not buy skim milk or fruit juice.”

Stollings doesn’t buy into that argument.

“I think they’re going to buy whatever is in the vending machines and the school system then is not going to get harmed too much financially,” he said.

Gov. Joe Manchin has been a strong advocate for getting school children to eat nutritionally correct foods, rather than the so-called “junk foods.”

Just recently, the state Board of Education decided to outlaw caffeine in drinks available to students.

Stollings is bracing for some opposition by the soft drink industry, but says the ultimate health rewards far outweigh any financial considerations.

“In the big picture, it’s a small price to pay for healthy habits,” he said.

“Having to deal with obesity and the cost of obesity, and diabetes, you’ll save boatloads of money down the road. I think the school board gets it. We have to look out for the kids’ health rather than a few dollars.”

Some may argue that sugary drinks and candies are harmless, but Stollings says a look inside many a West Virginia mouth tells him otherwise.

“We’re near the bottom as far as the quality of our oral health,” he says.

“We have untreated tooth decay. We have an access to care problem. Medicaid, we have found, is not paying the dentists very much at all. The busy dentists are busy seeing people that can pay or that have good insurance.”

Oral health is so dismal that West Virginia has a bad reputation that forms the basis for wisecracks.

“We are the butt of jokes,” he said. “I’m not proud of that. We can change that. We can turn it around. There’s this societal thing, too, that we don’t value our oral health like we should. We don’t understand the impact that bad oral health has on our general health. Heart disease and things like that, diabetes — all these things are impacted.”

Stollings played a key role in efforts to get an office of oral health to address what he and others view as a chronic problem across the state.

Poor oral hygiene is normally a harbinger of other bad things to come in one’s health, he says.

“If you have bad oral health, your overall health probably is not good, either,” he said.

And there’s the handicap dental troubles can impose on an individual.

“Folks that don’t have good teeth miss out on having good jobs,” Stollings said “They have self-esteem issues. They don’t end up being successful in life.”

And some are resigned to surrendering their natural teeth to dentures rather than take care of oral hygiene early on in life, he says.

“People don’t understand that’s not the way it should be,” the senator said.

“You should die with your permanent teeth, if you take good care of them.”

— E-mail:

mannix@register-herald.com