Can Energy Drinks Harm Your Kids?
June 16, 2011, By Kasie Baltes 0 comments
It’s a fizzy, sugary little pick me up that you crave when coffee doesn’t seem to cut it. Just a few sips and you feel it. You feel the sugar-like jacket coat your teeth and your heart starts to beat just a little bit quicker. It’s immediate—you are awake. Your fingertips shake as the caffeine hits all areas of your body and you immediately wake up to where you finally feel energized. Energy drinks are on the rise in American diets, and it’s not just college students and adults sipping on this extra burst of energy. Over the past few years, more and more children are jumping on this caffeine-infused bandwagon and it’s not just their teeth you should be worried about.
Energy drinks can spark a whole mess of health problems for adults, so you can only imagine the affect it can have on a young child. Typical energy drinks contain caffeine, sugar, taurine, guarana and B vitamins that are all responsible for giving you that extra boost of energy. While you might think extra vitamins can only do the body good, they can actually do harm, especially for growing bodies at such a young age. Dawn Weatherwax, Sports Dietician and Author of Complete Idiot's Guide to Sports Nutrition talks about the harm these drinks can have on children.
“Caffeine is a stimulant," says Weatherwax. "It affects the brain and thought processes. For someone young, their blood sugar is going to spike from all of the sugar and their body will have to work twice as hard to process it. These stimulants are formulated for adults. These drinks give you a stimulant overload. It’s like giving an adult vitamin to a child.”
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