DOC News May 1, 2005
Volume 2 Number 5 p. 14
© 2005 American Diabetes Association
Sweet Drinks and Overweight Children
Sweet drinks, including soda, fruit drinks, and other sweetened beverages,substantially increase the risk of overweight and obesity among low-incomepreschool children, according to a report in the February 11, 2005, issue ofPediatrics.
A group of researchers from the federal Centers for Disease Control andPrevention, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Missouri conducted astudy of 10,904 children who were 2 or 3 years old and enrolled in theMissouri Woman, Infants, and Children (WIC) program.
Family members of participants completed a health questionnaire andchildren had their body mass index (BMI) calculated based on height andweight. Overweight was defined by the researchers as a BMI that is in the 95thpercentile or greater for age and sex.
At baseline, 75.5% of the children were normal or underweight, 14.5% wereat risk of overweight, and 10.1% were overweight. Of those who were normal orunderweight, 3.1% were overweight at the end of the one-year follow-up period,25% of those who were at risk were overweight, and 67% of those who wereoverweight at baseline remained so.
Researchers noted a strong link between the consumption of sweet drinks andoverweight. Children who were at risk of overweight at baseline and consumedtwo or more sweet drinks per day had about double the risk of being pushedinto the overweight range at the 1-year follow-up.
It's possible the study could be flawed by selection bias or a small samplesize, but according to the authors it "provides evidence that theconsumption of sweet drinks as infrequently as 1 to 2 times daily increasesthe odds of becoming overweight among those who arerisk."
Welsh JA, Cogswell ME, Rogers S, et al.: Overweight amonglow-income preschool children associated with the consumption of sweet drinks:Missouri, 1999–2002. Pediatrics 115: 223–229, 2005.
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