Soft Drinks and Violence?
I was interested to hear about a study linking consumption of non-diet soft drinks with violence in teenagers. The study found teenagers who drank soft drinks frequently were 9 – 15% more likely to engage in violent activities, than those who were not frequent drinkers. Almost one in three pupils in the study group of 1,878 drank over five cans of soft drink a week. And if that's one in three, presumably many of the people in the study group must get the majority of their hydration from soft drinks.
This was an observational study, so perhaps the ingredients in the soft drink caused the anti-social behaviour in those who consumed it; or perhaps the anti-social behaviour lead to those teenagers drinking more soft drinks?
But surely with such a high correlation, it has to be beneficial to prevent soft drinks being so accessible to teens? Even more of a problem seems to be the prevalence of energy drinks that seem especially popular with young people. I'd love to see some studies into the effects of these chemically laden drinks.
Limit Soft Drinks?
Do you think teenagers should be given a free rein, or should soft drinks consumption be limited somehow?
