Teen Violence and Soda Consumption

RESEARCHERS in the United States have said they had found a "shocking" association - if only a statistical one - between violence by teenagers and the amount of soda they drank.

High-school students in inner-city Boston who consumed more than five cans of non-diet, fizzy soft drinks every week were between nine and 15-percent likelier to engage in an aggressive act compared with counterparts 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," said David Hemenway, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.

"It was shocking to us when we saw how clear the relationship was," he told AFP in an interview.

But he stressed that only further work would confirm - or disprove - the key question whether higher consumption of sweet sodas caused violent behaviour.


The new study was based on answers to questionnaires filled out by 1878 public-school students aged 14 to 18 in the inner Boston area, where Hemenway said crime rates were much higher than in the wealthier suburbs.

The overwhelming majority of respondents were Hispanic, African-American or mixed; few were Asian or white.

Among the questions were how much carbonated non-diet soft drink, measured in 12-ounce (355ml) cans, the teens had drunk 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 partner. What emerged, said Hemenway, was evidence of "dose response," in other words, the more soda was consumed, the likelier the tendency towards violence.

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.

At the other end of the scale, 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 sugary fizz were between nine and 15 percentage points likelier to show aggressive behaviour compared with low consumers, even when ethnicity and other confounding factors were taken into account.

This is a magnitude similar to the link found, in previously researched, with alcohol or tobacco. Hemenway said the study had included a couple of questions aimed at taking a children's home background into account, including whether the teen had taken a meal with his family in the previous days.

As it was only intended as a preliminary investigation, the questionnaire did not ask what kind of sodas the teens drank, he said. "This is one of the very first studies to examine" the question, said Hemenway.

"We don't know why (there is this 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.

"We want to look at it more carefully in following studies."

The study, published in a British journal, Injury Prevention, will revive memories of the "Twinkie Defence," a US legal landmark in which a killer successfully argued that his behaviour had been swayed by eating junk food.

The defendant in this case, Dan White, had been charged with homicide. His lawyer's successful pleading led to conviction of a lesser charge, of voluntary manslaughter.

Several studies elsewhere have established a link between very high sugar consumption and lack of social bonding or irritable and anti-social behaviour. Some diet research has also pointed the finger at the lack of micro-nutrients as a source of aggression, but this work is still in its early stages.

Source:Australian News 10/25/11

Teens Skimp on Exercise But Not Soda

Only about one in 10 U.S. teens is getting enough exercise and one in four has a soda a day, adding to concerns about obesity among American youth, government researchers said on Thursday.
A team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked to see how many students were meeting targets for youth physical activity.
They found about one out of 10 U.S. high school students met U.S. targets for both aerobic and muscle strengthening activities set for the federal government's Healthy People initiative, a list of public health goals.
In a separate study, CDC researchers surveyed U.S. high school students and found that teens drink water, milk and fruit juice most often, but a quarter also drink at least one sugar-sweetened soda a day.
Both studies raise concerns about the health of U.S. teens, and call for increased efforts to get them moving more and consuming fewer sweet drinks.
In the beverage survey of more than 11,000 teens, the CDC said overall, roughly two-thirds of high school students drank at least one sugary beverage a day, including soda, sports drinks like Gatorade and other sweetened beverages.
CDC said the findings are worrying because studies have shown that sugar-sweetened beverages add calories to the diet and often are substituted for healthier beverage choices.
And among teens, specifically, sweetened beverage consumption can contribute to weight gain, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, a risk factor for diabetes, the CDC said.
In the physical activity study, CDC researchers analyzed data from a school-based survey of youths in grades 9 through 12 (roughly ages 14-19).
They looked to see how many students were meeting the 2020 Healthy People targets, which call for 60 minutes of aerobic activity per day, muscle-strengthening activity three days a week and weekly activities that combine both forms of exercise.
The report found that only 15.3 percent of U.S. high school students met the aerobic objective of an hour of exercise a day, 51 percent met the muscle-strengthening objective, but just 12.2 percent met the objective of combining both activities.
Boys were much more likely than girls and younger students more likely than older students to meet those targets.
The researchers said the findings "justify the need to improve and increase efforts to promote physical activity among youths," adding that public health efforts should focus on at-risk groups including females, students in upper grades and the obese.

Source: Reuters 6/16/11

Can Soda Labels Be Trusted?

High-fructose corn syrup in soda has much more fructose than advertised, study finds

High-fructose corn syrup is often singled out as Food Enemy No. 1 because it has become ubiquitous in processed foods over about the last 30 years – a period that coincides with a steep rise in obesity. One of the primary sources of HFCS in the American diet is soda – in fact, many public health advocates refer to soda as “liquid candy.”

That nickname is more apt than advocates realized, according to a study published online this month by the journal Obesity.

Researchers from the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine went shopping in East Los Angeles and bought 23 cans and bottles of popular beverages. Then they sent them off to a laboratory in Massachusetts that used a technique called high-performance liquid chromatography to determine how much fructose, glucose and sucrose were in each sample. Each beverage was tested three times, and all samples were unlabeled.

Before we get to the results, let’s pause for a quick review on sugars. Fructose and glucose are simple sugars. Fructose is sweeter than glucose and has been shown to do more damage to your metabolism. Sucrose – better known as table sugar – is a 50-50 combination of fructose and glucose. The HFCS used in soda is supposed to contain no more than 55% fructose and 45% glucose, according to the Corn Refiners Assn. (Another popular formulation is 42% fructose and 58% glucose.) This slight difference is the reason why we here at Booster Shots frequently say that HFCS is just as unhealthy as “natural” sugar.

But it turns out that some of the stuff they put in soda isn’t HFCS, it’s RHFCS – Really High Fructose Corn Syrup.

The Keck researchers found that the sweeteners in Coca-Cola and Pepsi contained as much as 65% fructose (and only 35% glucose), and Sprite registered as much as 64% fructose (and 36% glucose).

“The type of sugar listed on the label is not always consistent with the type of sugar detected,” they wrote. “Considering that the average American drinks 50 gallons of soda and other sweetened beverages each year, it is important that we have more precise information regarding what they contain, including a listing of the fructose content.”

To make sure the high-performance liquid chromatography tests were accurate, the researchers also sent samples of pure fructose, pure glucose and pure sucrose. The test detected 9.9 grams of fructose in a 10-gram sample of fructose, 9.8 grams of glucose in a 10-gram sample of glucose, and 9 grams of sucrose in a 10-gram sample of sucrose.

The study included a few other surprises:

Mountain Dew had 13% less sugar than advertised on the label, and Dr. Pepper had 8% less.

Tested samples of Mexican Coca-Cola – which is supposedly made with cane sugar instead of HFCS – contained no sucrose, only fructose and glucose in a 52%-to-48% ratio.

17% of the sweetener in Red Bull was fructose, even though sucrose and glucose are the only sweeteners listed on the label.

We weren’t the only ones surprised by the findings. Here’s what nutritionist Marion Nestle had to say about the study Tuesday on her blog, Food Politics: "I’ve been saying for ages that the sugar composition of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is no different from that of table sugar (sucrose)."

Oops.

Nestle continued: "At most, HFCS is supposed to be 55% fructose, as compared to the 50% in table sugar. Most foods and drinks are supposed to be using HFCS that is 42% fructose. A percentage of 55 is not much different biologically than 50, which is why the assumption has been that there is no biologically meaningful difference between HFCS and table sugar. This study, if confirmed, means that this supposition may need some rethinking."

The USC researchers pointed out that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows for some wiggle room on nutrition labels. Sodas are allowed to have as much as 20% more of a nutrient – including sugar and HFCS – than is indicated on the side of the can. Even Cokes and Pepsis with 65% fructose instead of 55% are only 18% higher than advertised.

Source: Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times, October 26, 2010
http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/oby2010255a.html