Children worldwide are drinking more sugary drinks

Children and young people around the world have increased their sugary drink consumption by 23% in the last 3 decades, according to a new study.

The study by US and Canadian researchers, is published in The BMJ.

The researchers found that, from 1990 to 2018, people aged between 3-19 increased their sugar-sweetened beverage intake from 2.9 servings per week to 3.6 servings per week. A standard serving was recorded as 248g.

“This study highlights the need for targeted education and policy interventions to change behaviour early on and prevent the adverse outcomes associated with sugar-sweetened beverage intake in childhood,” says first author Dr Laura Lara-Castor, who completed the study at Tufts University, USA, and is now a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington, USA.

The researchers analysed data from the Global Dietary Database, which collates data from dietary surveys done in 185 countries.

They looked for “sugary-sweetened beverages”, which they defined as any beverage with added sugar and more than 209 kilojoules of energy per 237g of drink.

This included homemade drinks, soft drinks, energy drinks, fruit drinks and punch. It excluded pure fruit and vegetable juices, artificially sweetened drinks, and sweetened milk.

Over the time period, children and adolescents increased their sweetened beverage intake twice as fast as adults.

But total amounts of sugary drink varied from region to region. In South Asia in 2018, children drank 1.3 servings of sugary drink per week, while in Latin America and the Caribbean, they drank 9.1 servings per week.

The largest increase was in sub-Saharan Africa, where children went from drinking 1.6 to 2.9 sugary drinks per week over the time period.

“Our findings should raise alarm bells in nearly every nation worldwide,” says senior author Professor Dariush Mozaffarian, from Tufts University.

“The intakes and trends we’re seeing pose a significant threat to public health, one we can and must address for the future of a healthier population.”

Higher income countries saw a decrease in sugary drink consumption from 2005 to 2018. In their paper, the researchers suggest this could be explained by the “increasing scientific and public health attention” on sugar-sweetened beverages.

“Policies and approaches at both a national level and a more targeted level are needed to reduce intakes of SSBs among young people worldwide,” write the researchers in their paper.