Carbonated Drinks Linked to Aggressive Behavior in Teens, Study Finds

By CP News Briefs, Wednesday, October 26, 2011

U.S. researchers have claimed that drinking one can of carbonated drink a day is linked to aggressive behavior by teenagers.

The report, posted online in the journal Injury Prevention, surveyed 1,878 teenagers aged 14 to 18 from 22 state schools across Boston. Students were asked how many soft drinks they had had over the past week, and also asked if they have been violent towards people and carried a gun or a knife in the past year.

There is no certainty about whether the consumption of fizzy drinks causes more aggressive behavior, but the cause has not been ruled out. However, the report showed that frequent consumption of fizzy drinks was associated with a 9 to 15 percent increased likelihood of aggressive behavior.

Researchers found that violent behavior increased in a “dose response” when students consumed more fizzy drinks.

Twenty-three percent of teenagers drinking one or no cans a week had carried a gun or knife. The figure rose to just under 43 percent of those drinking 14 cans or more. 14 percent of those drinking under one can a week showed violence, rising to 27 percent in those who consumed 14.

The researched concluded that: “There was a significant and strong association between soft drinks and violence.”

“There may be a direct cause-and-effect relationship, perhaps due to the sugar or caffeine content of soft drinks, or there may be other factors, unaccounted for in our analyses, that cause both high soft drink consumption and aggression.”

However, the study has been criticized by British psychologist Prof Peter Kinderman at the University of Liverpool.

“The causes of violence in young people are complicated and this work is presenting an overly simplistic interpretation of the role of 'soft' drinks,” he said.

He added: “There are a large number of known risk factors that would contribute to violent behavior that have nothing to do with the consumption of these drinks. We know, in many areas of human behavior that correlation does not imply causation. We also know that poor diet is associated with a range of negative health and social outcomes. This study is unsurprising.”

Kinderman concluded: “But, more importantly, it fails to address 'third-variable' issues that could explain the findings - kids exposed to different social, parental or educational backgrounds might therefore have different diets and different attitudes to aggression, without any direct causal link.”