Researchers provide the strongest evidence yet that soda and other sugary drinks contribute to the obesity epidemic in children.
The new findings, reported in a trio of studies published online in the New England Journal of Medicine, offer persuasive support for New York City’s first-in-the-nation ban on large-sized soft drinks at restaurants and sports arenas. Critics and the beverage industry immediately cried foul following the passage of the ban, arguing that there was little evidence that such drastic action would change people’s drinking habits — or their waistlines.
But the new research suggests that limiting children’s access to sugary beverages can indeed curb weight gain: one paper found that providing children with water or diet soda as an alternative to full-sugar soft drinks can lead to meaningful drops in children’s fat deposits and weight; another showed that drinking a single no-calorie drink a day, instead of a sugary one, slows weight gain, independent of other behaviors like overeating or failing to exercise. A third study finds that for people who are already genetically predisposed to obesity, drinking sugary sodas can make their weight problem worse.
Taken together, the papers provide the most robust evidence to date that sugary drinks are a significant driver of weight gain.
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In the first study, led by Janne de Ruyter at the VU University Amsterdam, scientists followed 641 normal weight schoolchildren aged 4 to 11 years for 18 months. The students were randomly assigned to one of two groups: one group received an 8-oz. can of a sugar-sweetened fruit drink to consume every day during recess, while the other group got an identical can of an artificially siweetened, calorie-free drink. On weekends, the children were sent home with two cans to drink on Saturday and Sunday. The trial was double-blinded, meaning that neither the children nor the researchers knew who received which beverage; the scientists went to great lengths to work with a soda manufacturer to formulate beverages that tasted the same and were presented in cans that looked the same.
At the end of the 18-month trial, the children drinking the sugar-free beverage had gained less weight, about 13.9 lbs. on average (6.35 kg) versus 16.2 lbs. (7.37kg) for the sugar-sweetened drink group. What’s more, the sugar-free group also gained 35% less in body fat than the other kids, as measured by an electrical impedance test that gauges fat accumulation.
The 2-lb. difference in weight gain between the groups may seem small, but it “is highly significant, especially since we are talking about an 8-oz. can,” says the study’s senior author Martijn Katan, emeritus professor of nutrition at VU University. “A small amount of soft drink can shift the prevalence of obesity from something parents don’t need to worry about into an entirely different territory. It also means that if you take away sugar, you can shift the curve away from obesity, as we saw with the children in the sugar-free group.”
Because the study involved a large number of children who were followed over a relatively long period of time, and because the it was blinded, Katan says the results provide the clearest evidence of how drinking sugar-sweetened beverages can affect children’s weight gain. Moreover, the researchers purposefully refrained from counseling the children or their families about good nutrition or the risks of obesity, and did not ask them to change their eating or activity habits in any way. All they varied was one beverage a day. Katan acknowledges that some of the children, just by virtue of being in a study, may have altered their eating habits, but given the size of the study, he says that any amendments made by participants in one group were likely balanced out by parallel changes in the other group.
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