With a potential for 300 calories or more coming from your child’s sugary drink, it’s no wonder studies are being undertaken to find ways to decrease this type of beverage intake in adolescent populations.
Yet decreasing the amount of calories adolescents drink on a daily basis doesn’t have to be that difficult. Simply letting kids know what those calories mean may be all it takes.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently reported in the American Journal of Public Health that providing African American adolescents with the facts about some of their favorite high-calorie drinks dramatically reduced how much they drank by 40%. Even better, letting the kids know how much physical activity it would take to burn off one drink resulted in a 50% decrease in high-calorie beverage consumption.
Apparently, adolescents, just like adults, want to better visualize what’s in their food. By showing the impact calories play on our daily lives, its much easier to see why getting just the right amount is important.
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