Keeping away from sugar-sweetened beverages is a sure and safe way of preventing teens from putting on unnecessary weight.
This has been proved conclusively by the researchers of the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. It analyzed the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages among adolescents and obesity.
Cara Ebbeling and colleagues included 224 children studying in ninth or 10th grades. All the participants were either obese or overweight and regular at taking sugary beverages. To reduce consumption of the soft drinks, researchers replaced the sugar-sweetened beverages with non-caloric beverages for a period of one year.
Apart from that, the investigators also tried to convince and motivate the youngsters from avoiding the drinks through frequent calls made to parents, visiting the participants home and spreading awareness through written messages.
At the end of the study, teens who were taking only non-caloric beverages for one year were found gaining fewer pounds (four pounds) than children who continued drinking sugar-sweetened beverages. Among all the participants, Hispanic children showed more progress than others, gaining 14 pounds less than the control group.
"No other single food product has been shown to change body weight by this amount over a year simply through its reduction," Dr. David Ludwig from the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center Boston Children's Hospital, who led the study with Ebbeling, said in a news release.
The study also succeeded in showing the teen's tendency to go for healthy choices with adequate support and access.
"Our findings suggest that both access to non-caloric beverages and clear messages for consumers may be at the heart of behavior change. Adolescents can make healthful dietary changes with adequate support and understandable messages," Ebbeling said.
Childhood obesity has become one of the major problems haunting American children. Efforts to prevent the young generation from taking soft drinks have been going on from a long time as consuming too much soft drink will pave the way for health problems like obesity, blood sugar, tooth decay, bone structures and food addictions.
Supporting the country in the fight against childhood obesity, many elementary schools in the United States recently removed unhealthy sugary beverages and high-fat milk from their meal lists.
