Use of sugar-free beverages among U.S. children is going up, according to a federal health survey.
Efforts were on from a long time to discourage the trend of consuming soft drinks regularly by young children as too much soft drink can lead to many health problems like obesity, diabetes and blood pressure.
Investigators found a major shift from the sweet drinks to the diet drinks with the number of children switching to the diet drinks doubling during the past ten years, Reuters reported.
The study included 42,000 people. All the participants shared their food choices of the previous day, before the survey.
According to Dr. Miriam B. Vos of Emory University in Atlanta, about 12.5 percent of children consumed artificially sweetened beverages in 2008, compared to six percent, ten years ago.
Apart from the children, adults were also found consuming diet drinks more often compared to past years.
As the country is facing risks from the growing childhood obesity, many diet versions of the soft drinks are easily available in markets. This could be the reason behind such major shift, the researchers said.
Earlier experiments conducted on animals have shown the artificial sweeteners leading to weight gain. However, the effect of the artificial sweeteners, aspartame, saccharin and sucralose on children is yet to be fully explored.
"We do want children to drink less sugar," Vos told MSNBC. "But the challenge is that there are no studies that have looked at the long-term health effects of artificial sweeteners in growing children."
"We don't know if anything like that happens in children," Vos added.
Apart from that, previous studies have found diet beverages escalating the risk of diabetes, heart problems and stroke.
The findings of the study have been reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
