According to a new study, consumption of sugary drinks among children and adolescents worldwide has increased by 23% over the past three decades.
The study by American and Canadian researchers was published in The BMJ.
The researchers found that between 1990 and 2018, people ages 3 to 19 increased their consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages from 2.9 servings per week to 3.6 servings per week. A standard serving was given as 248 g.
“This study highlights the need for targeted education and policy interventions to change behavior early and prevent the negative consequences of consuming sugar-sweetened beverages in childhood,” says lead author Dr. Laura Lara-Castor, who completed the study at Tufts University in the USA and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington in the USA.
The researchers analyzed data from the Global Dietary Database, which compiles data from nutrition surveys in 185 countries.
They looked for “sugary-sweetened beverages,” which they defined as all beverages with added sugar and more than 209 kilojoules of energy per 237 g of beverage.
These included homemade drinks, soft drinks, energy drinks, fruit drinks and punch. Pure fruit and vegetable juices, artificially sweetened drinks and sweetened milk were excluded.
Over time, children and adolescents increased their consumption of sweetened beverages twice as fast as adults.
However, the total amount of sugary drinks consumed varied by region. In South Asia, children drank 1.3 servings of sugary drinks per week in 2018, while in Latin America and the Caribbean, the figure was 9.1 servings per week.
The largest increase was in sub-Saharan Africa, where consumption of sugary drinks per week fell from 1.6 to 2.9 over the same period.
“Our findings should set off alarm bells in almost every country in the world,” says lead author, Professor Dariush Mozaffarian of Tufts University.
“The recordings and trends we are seeing pose a significant threat to public health. We can and must address this so that the population is healthier in the future.”
In higher-income countries, there was a decline in the consumption of sugary beverages between 2005 and 2018. In their work, the researchers suggest that this could be explained by the “increasing scientific and public attention” to sugar-sweetened beverages.
“To reduce the uptake of SSBs among young people worldwide, policies and approaches are needed at both national and more targeted levels,” the researchers write in their article.