Sodas Make Children More Aggressive, Suggests Study

Do you think that your child has become aggressive and is throwing too many tantrums? Blame it on their habit of excessive soda drinking.

Yes, that is right, if the latest study is to be believed. Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, University of Vermont, and Harvard School of Public Health conducted a research on five-year-old children and found that consumption of too much soft drinks can make children aggressive.

The researchers examined 3,000 children, who were registered in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a forthcoming birth cohort that tracks mother-child pairs from 20 large U.S. cities. The mothers were asked to provide the information about their children's soda consumption behavior two months before the survey.

The results showed that 43 per cent of the children had at least 1 soft drink daily and four per cent drank four or more sodas a day. The researchers said that children who consumed more soda showed more aggression, withdrawal and attention problems. These children were twice more likely to damage others' thing, start fights and attack people physically.

"We found that the child's aggressive behavior score increased with every increase in soft drinks servings per day," said Shakira Suglia, Mailman School assistant professor of Epidemiology.

However, the researchers were unable to find the relation between consumption of soft drinks and increased behavioral problems in children. However, they suggested that children should not be given more soft drinks and it would be helpful in reducing aggression in them.

The study was published in The Journal of Pediatrics.