A new study suggests children who drink soda, have a slight tendency to score higher on the scales that measure aggressive behavior than children who do not consume the sugary beverage.
According to Reuters, children who reportedly drank no soda scored an average of 56 on the aggression scale. Children who did consume one serving of the sugary beverage a day, scored 57, on average. The study continued to show 58 among those who drank two servings, 59 among those who drank three servings and 62 for four soda servings or more per day.
Aggressive behavior was measured on a scale between 0 and 100 - with higher scores indicating more aggression. The study stated that the average score is 50, and 65 is usually used as a clinical marker of when children should be evaluated for a problem.
According to the study, children who ran and rank four or more servings of soda per day were twice are more likely to destroy other people's belongings, get into fights and physically attack people, compared to children who didn't drink soda.
Although the numbers seem amusing, according to Reuters, the study's lead author said it would be difficult to prove the soda caused bad behavior and often times are not noticeable for individual room
"It's a little hard to interpret it. It's not quite clinically significant," Shakira Suglia, the study's leader and of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York, told Reuters Health.
Researchers took into account habits that may have influenced the results, such as how many hours does that child spent watching television, how much candy does the child consume daily and the child's educational history. Suglia said that although the increased aggressive behavior may not be noticeable for each child, it's moving all kids closer to the scale's clinical threshold.
"Furthermore, if they're drinking this much soda, it's probably taking away from other nutritional things the child could be eating," Suglia said, according to Reuters.
According to Reuters, previous work by some of the study's authors had found connections between soda drinking and violent behavior, but the link had not been studied in young children.
