Dietary factors related to dental caries may be both biological and behavioral. In the present study the relative contribution of a number of behavioral characteristics is analyzed in order to differentiate between caries-active (CA) and caries-inactive (CI) children. The study group comprised 49 CA and 55 CI 14-yr-old Danish children, constituting the dichotomous dependent variable. Several variables related to the social and cultural context in which food and snack consumption takes place were studied. Subsequently, their relative contributions to the discriminant function (CA vs. CI) were estimated using discriminant analysis. The three strongest discriminating variables were "weekly milk consumption" (-0.726), "packed lunch from home" (0.554), and "weekly consumption of candy in DKK" (0.306) as measured by standardized canonical discriminant function coefficients. These variables may be indicative of the impact of the social environment on dietary habits, pointing to the need for incorporating the social network as reinforcing agent in dietary counseling if dietary behavior is to be changed.