Yes. People were literally starving in the Middle Ages. If your local crops failed, and they often did, they didn't have trains and trucks to bring in food from somewhere else. They certainly didn't have beetus. Skulls from the Middle Ages have very little tooth decay as a result. That all changed as soon as Europeans colonized the Caribbean and started growing sugarcane. By the 17th Century skulls of people rich enough to buy sugar show extensive and at that time unfixable dental problems. Imagine the smell of people whose teeth were literally rotting out from their love of beetus. Source: I am  a history nerd.