Sir, large supermarket chains provide a wide range of popular own brand products for customers who are looking for good value. During this time of recession an increasing number of customers may be financially less well off, and fall within a lower socio-economic group.

Toothpaste is a popular own brand product, and although the own brand toothpaste may be inexpensive, it only contains 1,000 ppm Fl−1 (Asda and Tesco) which has been shown to be less effective at preventing caries when compared to 1,450 ppm Fl−1 or more concentrated toothpaste preparations.1

There are well documented oral health inequalities in the UK mainly linked to wealth and socioeconomic group.2,3

From a dental public health viewpoint, there should be some concern raised about toothpastes being created which are shown to be less clinically effective at preventing oral diseases, but which are specifically targeted at those people who are most at risk from oral disease.

I hope our dental public health colleagues are aware of the situation and are putting some pressure on supermarkets to create more effective 'own brand' health products. I'm sure there would be public outrage and swift intervention from health authorities if supermarkets started creating 'own brand condoms' which were 30% less effective at preventing disease than leading brands.