Caffeine gains popularity among kids

Kids today are throwing down their soda cans and reaching for coffee and high-energy drinks instead as their caffeine-loaded drink of choice, a study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds.

"You might expect that caffeine intake decreased, since so much of the caffeine kids drink comes from soda," said the study's lead author, Amy Branum, a statistician at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics in a statement. "But what we saw is that these decreases in soda were offset by increases in coffee and energy drinks."

Branum notes that five years ago no one was even talking about energy drinks, and now they are a fraction (6 percent) of the overall amount of caffeine consumed by young kids.

The report, published in the journal Pediatrics, estimated that 73 percent of children in the U.S. guzzle some amount of caffeine per day.

Soda is still the major source of caffeine intake, but the proportion has decreased from 62 percent to 38 percent, and to compensate, kids are now gravitating toward coffee. The amount of caffeine kids get from coffee rose from 10 percent in 2000 to 24 percent in 2010, the researchers learned.

Barnum worries about what these numbers can mean for kids' health.

"The biggest concern is that there are a lot of questions about how much is too much, and what the adverse effects are," she said in a statement.

Dr. Marielys Rodriguez Varela, a pediatrician at Miami Children's Hospital, is another expert working to bring attention to its possible side effects, like rapid heartbeat, high blood pressure and anxiety - not to mention how it can lead to obesity, a hot-button topic concerning children these days.

The study's team suggests the caffeine-charged kids lean toward drinking water or juice instead.