Study: Soft Drink Intake Linked to Childhood Obesity

L O N D O N, Feb. 16 -- An extra soft drink a day gives a child a 60 percent greater chance of becoming obese, new research suggests.

The U.S. study, published this week in The Lancet medicaljournal, says the soft drink-obesity link is independent of thefood children eat, how much television or videos they watch and theamount they exercise.

Experts, who called the findings "enormously important," havelong believed that sweetened drinks were contributing to the risingobesity epidemic among children, but said there has been noreliable evidence of a link.

"These are estimates and the study doesn't tell us theimportance of soft drinks relative to the other factors thatcontribute to obesity, but these data suggest that people aren'tcompensating" for the extra calories by cutting back on eating,said the study's lead investigator, Dr. David Ludwig, director ofthe obesity program at Boston Children's Hospital.

France Bellisle from France's Institute of Health and MedicalResearch, said the study provided "convincing" new evidence aboutthe relationship between sugar and weight gain in children.

Obesity up 100 Percent

The prevalence of obesity among children in the United Statesincreased by 100 percent between 1980 and 1994.

A common measurement of obesity is the body mass index, or BMI,which takes into account weight and height. A BMI of 25 means aperson is overweight. The threshold for obesity is a BMI of 30.

For children, experts disagree on what constitutes obesity. Somebelieve that, in general, any child with a BMI above the 85thpercentile for age and sex is obese, while others use the 95thpercentile.

The study used the 85th percentile as the threshold for obesity.By that measure, scientists estimate that 24 percent of Americanchildren are obese. Rates of childhood obesity in Europe are not ashigh as in the United States, but are on the rise. Accuratestatistics were not readily available.

The soft drink study involved tracking 548 children aged 11 or12 from public schools across Massachusetts for two school yearsuntil May 1997.