Kids and young adults who drink no water during the day consume twice the amount of calories from sugary drinks than those who do, according to a new study.<\/p>\n
The findings underscore the importance of children having free access to clean water, researchers say.<\/p>\n
“Kids should consume water every single day, and the first beverage option for kids should be water,” says Asher Rosinger, assistant professor of biobehavioral health and director of the Water, Health, and Nutrition Lab at Penn State. “Because if they’re not drinking water, they’re probably going to replace it with other beverages, like sugar-sweetened beverages, that are less healthy and have more calories.”<\/p>\n
Sugar-sweetened beverages include soda, sweetened fruit juices, sports drinks, energy drinks, and sweetened tea and coffee drinks. They don’t include 100-percent-fruit juices, drinks sweetened with zero-calorie sweeteners, or drinks that people sweeten themselves, like home-brewed coffee or tea.<\/p>\n
While other research has shown an overall decline in the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, there are still subpopulations of kids in the US who are more likely to consume sugary drinks, Rosinger says.<\/p>\n
He and colleagues wanted to better understand how many kids drink water on a given day, how many don’t, and how their caloric intake from sugar-sweetened beverages differ.<\/p>\n
For the study, which appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics<\/a><\/em>, researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a nationally representative data set that includes information on 8,400 children between the ages of 2 and 19.<\/p>\n
Not safe to drink?<\/h3>\n
While urging people to drink water is important, there are many reasons why kids may not drink any or enough water during the day, Rosinger says.<\/p>\n
“It’s important to note that in parts of the US, some people may not trust their water due to lead or other contamination. Water insecurity is a growing problem in the US, so we need to keep that in mind as important context, especially when it comes to parents who may be giving their kids soda or juice because they distrust the water.”<\/p>\n
In the future, Rosinger wants to explore possible interventions to help boost water intake in children.<\/p>\n
Source: Penn State<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"