Sweet Drinks and Overweight Children

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Welsh JA, Cogswell ME, Rogers S, et al.: Overweight among low-income preschool children associated with the consumption of sweet drinks: Missouri, 1999-2002. Pediatrics 115:223–229, 2005.

What is the problem and what is known about it so far?

Obesity is a growing problem in the United States . Some research shows that drinking sugary drinks, like regular sodas and some fruit juices, may cause obesity.

Researchers wanted to find out if sweetened drinks cause obesity in children.

Who was studied?

Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Missouri studied 10,904 children between 2 and 3 years old. These kids also were part of the Missouri Woman, Infants, and Children (WIC) program.

How was the study done?

The children's families completed a health questionnaire. And researchers figured the children's body mass index (BMI). BMI is a measure of weight related to height.

What did the researchers find?

At the beginning of the study, 75.5% of the children were normal or underweight, 14.5% were at risk of becoming overweight, and 10.1% were overweight. A year later, this is what happened to the children’s weight: Of those who were normal or underweight, 3.1% became overweight. Of those at risk of becoming overweight, 25% became overweight. And of those who were overweight at the beginning, 67% stayed overweight.

Researchers found a strong connection between being overweight and drinking one or two sweet drinks a day. Children who were at risk of becoming overweight at the start of the study and drank two or more sweet drinks per day were twice as likely as the other kids to become overweight.

What were the limitations of the study?

Parents had to remember how many sweetened drinks their kids had. So that information may not be correct. Only kids in the WIC program were studied, so what researchers learned may not be true for other groups.

What are the implications of the study?

Sugary drinks may be an important cause of obesity. Parents and doctors should try to get children to drink fewer sweet drinks, especially kids at risk of becoming overweight.