Sweet soft drinks help make children fat

WASHINGTON - The proof is in the calories: those sweet soft drinks, bottled teas and fruit drinks can make your children fat.

Children who drank more than 340ml of sweetened drinks a day gained significantly more weight over two months than children who drank less than 170ml a day, a team of nutritionists at Cornell University in New York found.

The soft drink industry has long argued that a lack of exercise and not the availability of drinks is responsible for the rise of obesity in the United States.

But the Cornell team's study of 30 children aged 6 to 12 found that on days when they drank sweetened drinks, they took in, on average, 244 more calories a day.

The children did not eat any less food to compensate for the extra calories in the sodas, lemonades and other drink treats.

Children who drank more than 454ml a day of sweetened beverages gained an average of 1kg, compared with a 0.31kg to 0.45kg gain in children who consumed on average 170ml to 453ml of sweetened drinks a day.

"These findings suggest that sweetened drinks may be a significant factor in the increase in obesity among children in the United States," said David Levitsky, a professor of nutritional sciences and psychology who oversaw the study.

Writing in the Journal of Paediatrics, Levitsky and PhD candidate Gordana Mrdjenovic defined sweetened drinks as soda, fruit punch, bottled tea or drinks made from fruit-flavoured powders, such as grape and lemonade.

They also found that children tended to pass up milk when they were offered a sweet drink, and that caregivers tended to offer either milk, or a sweet drink, but not both.

Children getting 340ml or more of soft drinks got 20 per cent less phosphorus, 19 per cent less protein and magnesium, 16 per cent less calcium and 10 per cent less vitamin A per day than recommended.

The World Health Organisation estimates that there are 17.6 million overweight children under five, with 20 per cent of children in European countries obese or overweight. Fifteen per cent of US children aged 6 to 11 are overweight. The Centre for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit health interest group, has lobbied for a tax on soft drinks, calling them "liquid candy".

"Soda pop is Americans' single biggest source of refined sugars, providing the average person with one-third of that sugar," the CSPI said in a statement.

"Twelve- to 19-year-old boys get 44 per cent of their 34 teaspoons of sugar a day from soft drinks."

- REUTERS