Do Soft Drinks Cause Violence?

There is a strong association between soft drinks and violence, say researchers at the University of Vermont’s Department of Economics and the Harvard School of Public Health. In a survey of Boston public high school students, they found that adolescents who drank more than five cans of soft drinks a week (nearly 30 percent of the sample) were significantly more likely to have carried a weapon and to have been violent with peers, family members, and dates. The researchers say there may be a direct cause-and-effect relationship, perhaps due to the sugar or caffeine content of soft drinks, or there may be other factors that cause both high soft drink consumption and aggression.

A group of Brazilian researchers recently reported data suggesting that depressed children consume more caffeinated drinks than nondepressed children, primarily in the form of sugary soft drinks. Read more about it in Psychiatric News.

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