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Kids from the ages of two to 19, consume about seven trillion calories in sugar-sweetened beverages per year, according to Steve Gortmaker of the Harvard School of Public Health. He spoke at the Obesity Society Annual Scientific Meeting in San Antonio on September 23rd. Seven trillion is a lot of calories in sugar-sweetened beverages. At, for example, 50 cents per can, it's about $24 billion a year.
All of those dollars and sugary calories are stoking the childhood obesity epidemic. Currently, in the U.S., about 17 percent of children and adolescents are obese—that's more than 12.5 million kids. And new research in the British Medical Journal suggests that obese children will have much higher risk factors for cardiovascular disease as adults. [Claire Friedemann, et al, Cardiovascular Disease Risk In Healthy Children And Its Association With Body Mass Index: Systematic review and meta-analysis] Even as kids, their hearts are changing shape to look like those of adults at risk for heart disease.
But the good news is that simply cutting out an average of 64 calories a day from kids' diets could start to level out the steep rise in childhood obesity. That's equivalent to less than half a can of most non-diet sodas.
—Katherine Harmon
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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4 Comments
Add CommentAh... more scare-mongering from the health facists! How about we put this into a little perspective?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the figures are referring to kids in the US only, then we're talking about approx. 70 million kids. 7 trillion calories/year then translates into 320 calories per kid per day, or just over 2 12oz. cans of regular Coca-Cola (140 calories each) per day.
If they're talking world wide then it's approx. 2 billion kids, wich is less than 10 calories per kid per day.
MadScientist72,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy does it scare you? People often cover their fears with anger, as you do here. Taking on too many unburned calories yourself?
You're misunderstanding my comments. I was talking about their ATTEMPT (unsuccessful in my case) to scare people into buying into their orthorexic view of nutrition by spinning the data into something that sounds calamitous, but is actually trivial once you put it into a realistic perspective. What you see as anger is nothing more than contempt for their pitifully transparent ploy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI disagree. I'm sure there is general, if not almost universal, agreement that two cans of diluted corn syrup per day is too much. The side effects of consuming what is essentially just a liquified sweetener go beyond just this consumption. In a diet that has too many 'empty' calories already, this addition is superfluous at best and more likely harmful.
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