TOO MUCH SODA DRINKING DURING TEEN YEARS MAY CONTRIBUTE TO CRIPPLING BONE DISEASE LATER IN LIFE

AUBURN, Aug. 28---Teen-age girls beware: your manic passion for soft drinks may catch up with you later in life.

Teen-age girls who consume soft drinks at the expense of milk and other calcium-rich products may increase their risk of osteoporosis, a painful, debilitating bone disease that affects millions of older women.

"Some teen-agers, boys and girls alike, are consuming up to five cans of soda every day," says Dr. Robert Keith, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System nutritionist. "And while sodas have calories, they have no other nutritional value."

Soda drinking wouldn't be as serious an issue if kids consumed a calcium-rich diet with plenty of dairy products and green leafy vegetables, Keith says. But the fact is they don't, and therein lies the problem.

For an increasing number of young people, soft drinksare being substituted for more nutritious beverages such as milk. And while it's still possible for youngsters to compensate for this by consuming other calcium-rich foods, most don't.

"If a teen is consuming roughly 2,000 calories a day, which includes five sodas, between 30 and 40 percent of their calories are coming from soft drinks," Keith says. "If they're not going to drink milk, the next best things are the dark, green leafy vegetables, such as turnip greens, romaine lettuce and broccoli."

Of course, given young people's historic disdain for these foods, he concedes it's very unlikely they will start now.

While many teen-agers likely will pay for these nutritional lapses later in life, Keith doubts many of them would change even if they were warned of the risks.

"It's just not a specific threat," Keith says. "Life after age 50 seems especially remote to these kids and so the issue isn't perceived as an immediate threat."

Complicating this is peer pressure: soft drinks after all, have been an integral part of the teen-age social scene for decades.

Even though age 50 seems far away to these girls, the spiraling effect that eventually leads to bone loss can begin as early as age 30, Keith says.

"Bone mass usually peaks round 30," he says. "After that, you either maintain what you have or you begin losing bone mass in minute degrees every year thereafter." The people who will pay most dearly with osteoporosis are those whose bone mass wasn't as high as it should have been upon reaching age 30, Keith says.

"A lot of bone mass is laid down in earlier adolescence," Keith says "So if kids miss their opportunities early in life by not consuming enough calcium-rich foods, they never catch up."

Women are especially vulnerable to osteoporosis because of estrogen loss at menopause.

While many parents discourage kids from eating too much of the perennial favorites associated with adolescence - cheese hamburgers and pizzas - Keith says consuming these foods in moderation may actually contribute to the formation of bone mass.

While both of these foods are known for their high levels of saturated fats, both are made with cheese. So, while they won't be doing much to enhance teens cardiovascular health, they likely will be reducing teens' risk of bone loss.

If parents can't persuade kids to forgo soft drinks or to eat more calcium-rich foods, wouldn't the next-best thing be calcium-enriched soft drinks?

Yes and no. While the process has been tried, thecalcium enrichment changes both the taste and appearance of soft drinks - so much so that most people aren't willing tobuy them.


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SOURCE: DR. BOB KEITH, Extension nutritionist, Alabama Cooperative Extension System (334) 844-3273.