Pediatricians have long warned parents about the risks of consuming too many sugary drinks — including the link to Type 2 diabetes and obesity.
Now, the nation's leading group of kids' doctors, the American Academy of Pediatrics, together with the American Heart Association, has endorsed a range of strategies designed to curb children's consumption — including taxes on sugary drinks, limits on marketing sugary drinks to kids and financial incentives to encourage healthier beverage choices.
"For children, the biggest source of added sugars often is not what they eat, it's what they drink," says Natalie Muth, a pediatrician and the lead author of the new joint policy statement. By one estimate, kids and teens get about 17 percent of their calories from added sugars — and about half of those calories come from drinks.
While consumption of sugary drinks has declined in the U.S., kids and teens still consume about 150 calories a day, on average, from them. That's about 12 ounces per day. But the heart association recommends that children consume no more than 8 ounces per week.
"There's a huge difference between what a typical child is drinking ... and what the recommendations are," Muth says. By one estimate, sweetened beverages account for at least one-fifth of the weight gained between 1977 and 2007 among people in the U.S.
The new statement calls on local, state and national policymakers to consider raising the price of sugary drinks. Muth says taxes on sugary drinks have been shown to be successful. She says taxes are "a great example of a way to increase the price of sugary drinks, which we know decreases consumption." The AAP and the AHA note that such taxes are already in place in U.S. cities including Berkeley, Calif., and Philadelphia.