Soda Makes Five-Year-Olds Break Your Stuff, Science Finds

Daniel_Stuckey writes "Shakira F. Suglia and co-authors surveyed 2,929 mothers of five-year-olds (PDF) and found that 43 percent of the kids consumed at least one serving of soft drinks per day. About four percent of those children (or 110 of them), drank more than four soft drinks per day, and became 'more than twice as likely to destroy things belonging to others, get into fights, and physically attack people.' In the past, soda and its various strains have been related to depression, irritability, aggression, suicidal thoughts, and delusions of sweepstake-winning grandeur. Of course, this study didn't find out what types of soda the children had consumed."

Re:Scientists finally discover...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no.

http://www.yalescientific.org/2010/09/mythbusters-does-sugar-really-make-children-hyper/

In 1982, the National Institute of Health announced that no link between sugar and hyperactivity had been scientifically proven. Why, then, does this myth still persist? It may be mostly psychological. As previously stated, experimentation has shown that parents who believe in a link between sugar and hyperactivity see one, even though others do not. Another possibility is that children tend to be more excited at events like birthday and Halloween parties where sugary foods are usually served . People may have confused proximity with correlation although the environment is probably more to blame than the food.

Re:Scientists finally discover...

[Attila Dimedici]

Actually, I don't know that. There was at least one study a few years ago that studied just that. It discovered that there was no difference in children's behavior after consuming a large dose of sugar. The researchers postulated that the myth about sugar resulting in kid's "bouncing off the walls", resulted from the fact that kids tend to consume large amounts of sugar in settings which cause them to be more active.

It isn't the soda. It's the survey.

[Smokey Behr]

The problem with the survey can be found in the results section of the Abstract. They oversampled males by +4, and 51% of the families were Black. This isn't a soda/soft drink issue; it's a parenting/cultural issue, which is mentioned, but essentially glossed over when you start delving into the "study". The families were already "in the system", as they were part of an ongoing study, which tells me that there were already parenting and cultural issues that go deeper than the family's diet.

As a dentist, my experience with 5 YO patients

[mark_reh]

who drink soda 4 times or more per day is that they are able to do so because of a lack of parental supervision (plus a few because of extreme dental ignorance on the part of the parents). I think that that same lack of supervision leads to bad behavior in little kids. I don't think I'd blame the soda for bad behavior, though caffeine may be contributing to the problem.

Re: Scientists finally discover...

[Joce640k]

The experiment has been done:

A) They took some kids to a party, let the parents see tables full of cake but secretly fed the kids raw tofu beans (or something like that). After dinner they made made the kids jump around to loud music for half an hour. On the way home all the parents swore the kids were hyperactive and it was all down to the sugar.

B) The took some 'problem' kids to a party and showed the parents tables full of raw tofu beans. When the parents left they fed the kids to bursting with chocolate cake, soda, anything with lots of sugar. After that they sat the kids down quietly and read them a bedtime story. The kids were falling asleep in their parent's cars on the way home. The parents put it all down to the tofu and swore to never feed their kids on sugar ever again.

Conclusion: The "sugar" thing is 100% confirmation bias by the parents.

There's a TV program on it somewhere - it's called "The Truth About Food" or something like that (it was one of a series made by the BBC).