Intake of Sports And Energy Drinks Tied to Unhealthy and Negative Behaviour

A study associates weekly consumption of sports and energy drinks among adolescents to unhealthy negative behavior.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota, in collaboration with researchers at Duke University, found that an adolescent's weekly intake of sports beverages such as Revive, Isostar, Gatorade and other such energy drinks was tied to a cluster of unhealthy behavior that includes cigarette smoking, excessive intake of sugar sweetened beverages and screen media use.

The main aim of the study was to understand the various health behavior patterns linked to adolescent's intake of sports and energy drinks and develop certain intervention strategies to lower the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages.

The national data reveals a steep decline in the rate of soft drinks and fruit drinks intake, the real fact is that over recent years there has been a three-fold increase among adolescents in the intake of sports and energy drink among adolescents.

The researchers conducted a study on 20 public middle schools and high schools in Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan region as a part of the 'Eating and Activity in Teens' a population based study.

During the 2009-2010 school year, the researchers completed surveys and anthropometric measures of 2,793 adolescents. The mean age of the participants was 14. Nearly 81 percent of the students belonged to racial/ethnic background other than the non-Hispanic white.

The researchers considered variables such as height and weight, frequency of sports drink, energy drink and breakfast intake, time spent in physical activity, video games and TV viewing and lastly smoking status.

Intake of sports drinks was tied to excessive levels of moderate and vigorous physical activity and participation in sports. The researchers claim that overall sports and energy drink intake is linked to cluster of unhealthy behavior among a few adolescents.

"Among boys, weekly sports drink consumption was significantly associated with higher TV viewing; boys who regularly consumed sports drinks spent about one additional hour per week watching TV compared with boys who consumed sports drinks less than once per week," said lead author Nicole Larson, PhD, MPH, RDN, University of Minnesota. "Boys who consumed energy drinks at least weekly spent approximately four additional hours per week playing video games compared to those who consumed energy drinks less than once per week."

Based on the finding, the researchers suggest that only after vigorous physical activity adolescents should take sports drinks and energy drinks should be discarded as they offer no health benefits and rather escalate the risk of overstimulation of the nervous system.

The finding was documented in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.