Young people who drink sugary soft drinks are at higher risk of becoming obese, a Boston, Massachusetts-based team of researchers report. Their work, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, is the latest in a string of studies warning that American teen-agers are increasingly putting their health at risk by consuming too much junk food.
Obesity can lead to heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.
The U.S. government has become so concerned about overweight children that last year it issued new growth charts to help parents and doctors identify kids at risk of becoming obese. The Boston researchers studied 548 children with an average age of 11 in four Massachusetts communities. They monitored the kids' intake of sugary drinks such as soda, sweetened tea and fruit drinks and noted changes in their Body Mass Index, or BMI, a measure of body fat. Even when they accounted for factors like physical activity and other diet choices, the relation between obesity and drinking sodas remained, Ludwig said. He stressed that more research is needed to back up the findings.