Before you replenish your teen’s favorite soda during your next trip to the grocery store, consider that the sugary carbonated beverage could turn him into a violent delinquent.
That’s the word from a new study conducted by a Harvard professor and his colleagues. David Hemenway, a professor at Harvard University’s School of Public, queried nearly 2,000 public school students from inner-city Boston about how much soda they consumed in a week. The survey also asked the students, ages 14 to 18, how often they carried weapons, consumed alcohol, smoked, and fought with others.
After analyzing the data, researchers concluded that teens, who consumed more than five cans of non-diet soft drinks per week, were 9 to 15 percent more likely to act aggressively than those who consumed less. In other words, the more soda a teen chugs in a given week, the more likely he or she is to be violent towards classmates, teachers, and family members.
The new research, which appears in the medical journal Injury Prevention; suggests that moderate to high soda intake is directly proportional to violent behavior.
“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 Hemenway. “It was shocking to us when we saw how clear the relationship was.”
According to researchers, students who admitted to drinking zero to one can of soda a week were half as likely to carry a gun or knife to school than students who drank 14 cans a week.
Hemenway notes: “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.”
How much soda does your teen consume per week?
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