We’ve all seen the crazy 5-year-old in the store that seems completely out of the control of the parent. Aggression, withdrawal, inattention. But it must be a brain condition that needs meds.
Or maybe it’s a common behavior you’re allowing your child to partake in.
I’m pretty sure that no parent thinks that soda is good for a child. But there’s no harm in a soda a day, is there? Besides, my kid’s active and will just burn off the calories. This last one always seems to be the rationale we use to justify toxic calories that we allow our children to have.
ANY empty calorie is bad for the human physiology, regardless of your age, gender, ethnicity or favorite subject in elementary school. I could easily take this further and note that drinking our calories, period, is a bad idea. You will NEVER get the nutritive value in a liquid that you can get from a solid. Pomegranate juice? Nothing compared to pomegranate seeds. Apple juice? No comparison to the whole apple. Milk? Nothing compared to, well…pretty much anything.
This particular article looks at just how toxic soda is for your child’s mental health and behavior and the results will hopefully make you reconsider condoning ANY soda for your child except on a rare occasion. Researchers looked at almost 3,000 5 year olds to determine how much soda drinking affected certain behaviors. Here’s the details:
- 43% of the children drank at least 1 serving of soda per day, with 4% drinking 4 or more servings per day.
- Aggression went up more with each soda per day.
- 4 or more also had more attention problems and withdrawn behavior.
- The highest consumers were 254% more likely to destroy others’ belongings, 228% more likely to physically attack people or 212% more likely to get into fights.
Unless you’re training a little mini cage fighter, these are some pretty bad statistics. The bottom line is that soda is clearly toxic to a developing, young brain. It is not merely the increased calories that you have to worry about. It is either some combination of ingredients in soda that aggravate the brain or possibly the lack of other nutrients that were displaced by the soda dementing the brain.
Instead of soda, try tea or water (NOT in a disposable plastic water bottle!!). Anything with calories should be avoided (milk, soda, sports drinks, lemonade, etc…) otherwise you’ll be battling a weight problem instead of a behavioral one.