Fizz link to violence
Tuesday October 25th, 2011
Teenagers who drink large numbers of cans of sugary, fizzy drinks may be prone to violent behaviour, researchers warned today.
A
study found some teenagers drinking 14 or more cans of a week of sweet
pop - and up to half of these carried guns or knives.
Well over half of these were involve in violence against other teenagers.
And more than one in four used violence against a partner.
Writing in the journal Injury Prevention, doctors say the chances of being involved in violence begin to increase when a teenager drinks just five cans or more a week.
The findings come from a study of nearly 2,000 teenagers in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
The researchers led by Dr David Hemenway, of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, write: "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."
Injury Prevention doi 10.1136/injuryprev-20011-040117
Tags: A&E | Diet & Food | Infancy to Adolescence | North America
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