Heavy soft drink consumption has been linked to violence among teenagers, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
According to the researchers, high school students in inner-city Boston who consumed more than five cans of non-diet soft drinks weekly were between 9 percent and 15 percent more likely to engage in aggressive behavior compared to peers who drank less.
“What we found was that there was a strong relationship between how many soft drinks that these inner-city kids consumed and how violent they were, not only in violence against peers but also violence in dating relationships, against siblings,” David Hemenway, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, told AFP.
“It was shocking to us when we saw how clear the relationship was,” he added.
The new study was based on answers to questionnaires filled out by 1,878 public school students aged 14 to 18 in inner-city Boston. The majority of respondents were Hispanic, African-American or mixed; few were Asian or white.
The teens were asked how many carbonated non-diet soft drinks they had consumed in the previous seven days. They were also asked whether they drank alcohol or smoked, carried a weapon or showed violence towards peers, family members and dating partners.
Among those who drank one or no cans of soft drink a week, 23 percent carried a gun or a knife, 15 percent perpetrated violence towards a partner, and 35 percent had been violent towards peers. Among those who drank 14 cans a week, 43 percent carried a gun or a knife, 27 percent had been violent towards a partner, and more than 58 percent had been violent towards peers.
Overall, teens who were heavy consumers of soft drinks were more likely to engage in aggressive behavior — even when ethnicity and other factors were taken into account.
“We don’t know why [there is a strong association]. There may be some causal effect but it’s also certainly plausible that this is just a marker for other problems — that kids who are violent for whatever reason, they tend to smoke more, they tend to drink more alcohol and they tend to maybe drink more soft drinks. We just don’t know,” Hemenway told AFP.
“We want to look at it more carefully in following studies,” he said.
This study was published in the British journal Injury Prevention
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