Funding for schools and school events is an ongoing dilemma. To offset some of their expenses, schools across the nation have committed to soft drink companies, allowing them to place vending machines in their lunchrooms, gyms and other locations where students can access sugary drinks.
Because soda brings increased negative health effects to schoolchildren, schools have begun to reduce their access, according to the School Health Profiles Survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Problem
Lunchtime soft drink consumption has a negative impact on the quality of a child's diet, according to a study by the Journal of Child Nutrition Management. "Pouring rights" contracts with schools also undermine nutrition education taught in schools and push brand loyalty early in life, says Marion Nestle, M.P.H., Ph.D., in a 2001 Public Health Report commentary. About one-third of U.S. schoolchildren drank sugared soda during school within the past week, according to a 2007 CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
Dental Problems
Drinking carbonated beverages such as soda erodes tooth enamel, and the sugar also can lead to cavities, according to K.E. Heller and colleagues in a 2001 Journal of Dental Research study.
Unhealthy Bones
Every soft drink consumed replaces milk and other calcium-fortified drinks that help growing kids build healthy bones. Milk consumption by children decreased by 36 percent between 1965 and 1996, replaced with soft drink and other sugary beverage consumption, reported Claude Cavadin and colleagues in an Archives of Diseases in Childhood study.
Obesity
Kids are getting fatter and soft drinks are partially to blame, according to a Lancet study. It found that for each sugary soft drink kids drank, their body mass index and odds of being overweight rose.
Solutions
In place of yours or your child's soda, swap milk, 100 percent fruit juice or water, says a UCLA health research policy. Support soda taxes and discourage schools from signing contracts to sell unhealthy beverages in schools.
References
- Lancet. 2001 Feb 17;357(9255):505-8
- Archives of Diseases in Childhood
- Johnson RK, Panely C, Wang MQ. The association between noon beverage consumption and the diet quality of school-age children. J Child Nutr Manage.1998; 22 :95 --100
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