AANP – High-Sodium Diet Linked To Higher Intake Of Sugary Drinks – (Tuesday, December 11, 2012) –Scientists have found that children who eat a lot of salty food also tend to drink more sugary drinks, which in turn might be related to their risk of obesity. The more salt the children in the study consumed each day, the greater the amount of fluids they drank; the same held true when the researchers zeroed in on the nearly two-thirds of kids who drank sugary beverages. For every additional amount of 390 mg of sodium the children took in each day, they averaged an extra 0.6 ounces of sugar-sweetened soda, juice or other drinks. Those liquid calories, in turn, were weakly linked to the risk of obesity. Kids who had more than one sugar-sweetened drink in a day were 26 percent more likely to be overweight or obese than their peers who avoided sweetened drinks. However, the researchers stressed that the link between extra sodium and sweetened drinks does not necessarily mean that one causes the other. This research was released by the journal Pediatrics on December 10, 2012, and will appear in the January 2013 print issue. The full-text version of this study is now available online at http://tinyurl.com/bw8mrts without cost.
