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The best way for parents to reduce the amount of soft drinks their young children drink is to not serve it with meals, a new study suggests.
The findings from researchers in Belgium showed that children from higher-income families drank less than half — about 42 percent — as much soda as children from lower-income families. However, the vast majority of the difference between the income groups could be explained by three parenting practices: not offering soda at mealtimes, not letting kids drink soda whenever they want, and not keeping soda in the house, according to the study.
"Parents have a great influence through the food they make available and accessible to the child, their own nutritional behavior and by child-feeding practices," the researchers wrote in their study, published online April 1 in the journal Appetite.
Reducing the amount of soda kids drink is important, the researchers say, because sugary beverages have been linked with obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
What works, what doesn't
Researchers based their findings on questionnaires completed by 1,639 parents of children ages 2 to 7.
The practice of not offering soda at mealtimes explained about half of the difference in soda consumption seen between the high- and low-income families, according to the study. Not letting kids drink soda whenever they want explained about a third of the difference, and not having soda in the home explained 16 percent of the difference, according to the study.
"It makes sense that the home environment and home 'policies' or limits related to soft drinks will have the biggest impact," on soda consumption, said Kate Dickin, a nutritional science research at Cornell University who was not involved in the study. "Our behavior is very strongly influenced by our environments," Dickin said.
The study also revealed that telling children of this age that soda is unhealthy, and refraining from drinking soft drinks in front of them, are unlikely to make a difference.
"Although modeling and explaining why foods are unhealthy can be important, not having any soda in the house or on the table is clearly the most effective way to prevent consumption," Dickin said. If the soda is right there, it’s a lot harder to for parents — especially tired, stressed or distracted parents — to say "no," she said.
The study was limited in that it was conducted with a specific group of parents, and relied on their reports of their own behaviors and how much soda their kids drank.
How to make healthy choices appealing to kids
Dickin said it's helpful when parents understand how to create a home environment that offers kids healthy choices.
"Young kids respond well to simple ways to make a healthy beverage seem special — a pretty cup, a citrus slice, or a drinking straw. Healthy eating is enjoyable and can be presented that way — to parents and to children," she said. "Framing it in terms of restriction and deprivation gets us nowhere."
Dickin said that by looking only at soft drink consumption, the study might have missed part of the picture of what kids are drinking. "Replacing soda with other sugar-sweetened beverages doesn’t help, so it would have been useful to know about all sweetened drinks."
Still, "it’s great to have more evidence of the importance of shaping the home environment as a means for parents to influence child behaviors," Dickin said. Cornell offers an education program for lower-income families focused on learning to make healthier choices.
"We hear back from a lot of parents that these approaches are really effective," Dickin said.
4 Tips for Kicking Your Soda Habit
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My kids really didn't have much soda at home -- maybe once in a while as a special treat, but that was it. That part was easy.
Then they went to school, where there were soda machines. Even though I didn't give them money for soda, they'd go without lunch for it or use their allowances. Why not; it's liquid candy. The stuff was like crack. As it happens, my kids did not become obese, since other than the soda they actually ate a pretty healthy diet, but many kids started a lifelong struggle with their weight during their school years, no doubt partly fueled by the empty calories of soda, peddled to them in a place that should have been teaching them about good food choices. It was a moneymaker for the school system, that's why the schools did it. And it was a great way for the soda companies to get kids hooked on their product.
I understand that now they've taken the soda machines out of the schools. Thank God -- I bet that in itself will help the obesity epidemic.
Agreed, I'm glad they're taking the pop machines out of schools, but they're simply replaced by other sugary drinks. For example, most people don't need gatorade when exercising. It has things you lose when you work out, salt, sugars etc. If you don't SERIOUSLY work out and sweat a lot, you don't need it. If you didn't work out hard, it's just another sugary drink. If you really want to drink it, water it down half and half.
Don't even get me started on "energy" drinks. Ugh.
Back when I was in high school, the machines were turned off during the school day, then turned on probably about a half hour after school ended. (They were on a timer) Don't ask me how they made money, because they were turned off during events like basketball games as well.
When I was younger (early high school age?) I drank SO much pop. I'd go home to relax, sit on the couch and drink 3 or 4 Fanta Orange Sodas. I LOVED those things. Mind you, I've always been skinny. One day, I decided that drinking pop was bad for me, so I stopped. Cold turkey. I didn't drink pop for probably 3 or 4 years after that. Now, I'll have a pop once a month or so. I just... love drinking water. It quenches my thirst better than anything else and I enjoy the taste. I still love the taste of pop, but I feel guilty drinking it. (And it annoys my throat.)
We are so busy looking for scapegoats. Kids do not get unlimited soda unless parents are willing to provide it. As some have pointed out, kids are not stupid and will give up the lunch money for carrots, celery, salad, and fruit to have candy and pop. If we are truly honest, carrots do not taste as good as a candy bar. And teaching moderation and priority when it comes to food and snacks is part of parenting. If you try to eliminate all sources of "goodies" and "treats", you only succeed in making it more desirable as "forbidden fruit" Back in the dark ages, our parents bought school lunch passes, which could only be used for the menu offering of the cafeteria, hence, we didn't have the cash for soda or candy machines. Lunch menus were published once per month, and if a child truly disliked something, that was the day to send a brown bag special. Likewise, there were milk passes and when you went through the lunch line, they took a punch from the pass for each carton of milk. Your parents paid monthly and the choice of beverage was milk or water.
That being said, we still cannot get away from the overriding issue. We expect kids to be quiet and sedentary, our teachers value that, computers, lap tops, Ipads and Ipods, watching movies, watching TV at home and playing computer games all contribute to kids that don't behave as children-don't go outside, don't play and run. The cost of a Wii is about $200, but how many parents will spend the same amount of money to provide skates, balls, bicycles etc. Each game is upwards of $50, but how many parents will spend the same $50 for a park district recreation or sports program. I find it a greater indictment of our society that there have to be breaks in children's TV programming to tell kids to get outside and play for an hour each day, and refer them to websites for ideas of what to do once outside. We buy a computer game to simulate tennis or golf instead of getting our kids involved with the real activity. We have to kick our kids outside, and yet when we were growing up, our parents dragged us in kicking and screaming for more time. Schools have found a myriad of clever ways to circumvent regular physical education, by co-opting the time slot with things like health classes-once again, sit quietly in a chair and be told how to be healthy by exercising-the message and the reality seem to cancel one another out.
My kid is allergic to the carbonating agent in soda pop.
So, allergice to soda pop!
Wa-laaa!
wow! ive never heard of that Avi iva. that sucks.
Maybe there should be a new law.
It's always amazing to me that so many people can't figure out that the word parent is a verb as well as a noun. I didn't drink soda very much as a kid (except when we went out because soda was always cheaper than milk) because my parents wouldn't buy soda - how difficult is this to figure out?
I have to agree with fallout and the other posters...if Parents parent their children in part by not buying soda on a regular basis and not drinking a lot themselves then children won't drink the stuff. Doesn't seem like rocket science to me.
i agree tj harris! my mom raised me knowing that milk and juice were good for me so i most often choose them over pop.
in highschool it was pretty easy choose sprite over milk sometimes because the pop machineswere everywhere. i did love getting the choc. milk. you had to get it in a different line that you got the pizza which made it easier to get the sprite. I bet my daughters will be the same way. They will choose milk and juice over pop. it really matters more how you are raised because my mom always had milk and different kinds od juices ever since i can remember. My mom would get alot of pop when it was on sale. I would have maybe a few cans a week when i was in highshool. thats not bad. if i have a craving for root beer when i am at a restaraunt or carbonation but other than that i try to get water. of course it is also free too! ; )today my daughter said juice has she has for the past 4 mths or so.. but today it was different. she said juice then you could tell she was thinking because then she said "mil"(milk). shes been saying it since she was 16 mths. old she was telling me she wanted milk this time instead of juice. It was really cool. she sees her mommy drink water and milk constantly so im deffinately not worried. ; )i didnt know at 20 mths old she would be telling me what she really wanted.
My parents never kept soda of any kind in the house, and to this day I dislike carbonated beverages. My daughter is three and she makes a face any time she takes a sip of a carbonated beverage so I expect she'll be the same. It's really not rocket science, if it's not around the kids will learn to drink other things.
We may be looking at this entirely the wrong way. If our kids spend 40 hours per week in the school environment, it is a small slice of time, less than 1/4 of any given week. Most schools allow half an hour or less for lunch break, which means that the total amount of exposure is under three hours per week. If we continue to try to sanitize the world, then our kids never learn how to prioritize, make good choices, because they never have choices to make. At some point, they will be adults without having learned the skills to discriminate between healthy and non-healthy behavior. They will become the proverbial "kids let loose in a candy store". My daughter has had friends over, kids who never see treats such as pop or chips or cake at home-only healthy choices......these kids are like pirahnna if I offer a treat. Where my child will be content with a handful of chips and a glass of soda, these kids will eat the entire bag and polish off the entire two litre bottle by themselves and still be looking for more. And more and more, the medical profession is coming out with information that says even the supposedly healthy stuff, like 100% juices has too much sugar if done to excess. Those completely natural, organic granola bars are laden with sugar-as much as candy bars. Honey is sugar. Fructose is sugar. Heck even the lactose in milk is a sugar.
Also, when you consider that the majority of their lives are not spent in school, the real indictment comes from the fact that parents can believe that what happens at school in 3-4 hours can negate the nutrition of the rest of the week in the home environment. What does that say about the quality of nutrition and teaching that goes on in the home if food exposure that lasts approximately 5% of the total week can undermine it and affect long term health and obesity issues. I have one child that gave up soda for Lent one year and just never went back, but it wasn't because we stripped the world of that temptation.
"A New study suggests"???!!!
Seriously... NEW?!
Parents should just tell their children NO. thats that.
This refers to 2 to 7 year olds. We didn't have any soda in the house period when I was a kid. I can see it being more difficult when kids are exposed to other things in school, but at an age where the parents should be able to completely control the environment I don't get what the problem is. Pick day cares and kindergartens and play buddies where soda is banned. They should be drinking water and maybe some milk and juice. Maybe I'm missing something. I think they need to re-educate the parents first. It seems like everyone these days is blaming others for their own problems.