Does drinking soda turn kids into bullies? New research links sodas and aggression

Posted by Maria Mangicaro
Bullying Prevention Advocate
mangicaro829@aol.com

Does drinking soda turn kids into bullies? New research links sodas and aggression
Tuesday, August 20, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes

(NaturalNews) Researchers say in a new study that kids who drink soda pop generally score higher on aggressive behavior scales than kids who don’t drink the carbonated beverages.

The lead author of the study said, though, that the increased aggressiveness may not necessarily be noticeable in individual children. Also, researchers were unable to prove soda was key to causing the bad behavior, Reuters Health reported.

“It’s a little hard to interpret it. It’s not quite clinically significant,” said Shakira Suglia, of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York.

That said, previous research by some of the study’s authors unearthed ties between soda consumption and violent behavior; however, the link had not thus far been studied in younger children.

The data are compelling

Per Reuters Health:

For the new analysis, the researchers used an existing study of mothers and their 2,929 children from 20 large U.S. cities. The mothers and children were first recruited between 1998 and 2000 to be periodically interviewed and evaluated.

Mothers completed a checklist on children’s behaviors over the previous two months to measure withdrawal, attention and aggression.

“It’s things like how often does a child destroy his or her own belongings and how often do they destroy the belongings of others,” said Suglia.

The moms were also asked about how many servings of soda their kids drank per day, and about other habits they had, like watching television.