by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: September 16, 2009   Last Updated: October 31, 2009

Sugary sodas make a huge contribution to childhood obesity and other health problems, including Type II Diabetes. It makes no sense for children to have access to as many sodas as they can afford to buy on any given school day.

One cup of a standard cola contains 9 tsp of sugar and contributes 136 calories. 12 ounces of Grape soda has a whopping 160 calories and at least 9 tsp of sugar. A site called

"Calories In Drinks" allows visitors to select from all of the most popular sodas to create a customized chart for identifying the worst offenders.

Worse, the caffeine content of many sodas is way too high for the average child to tolerate. When a child weighing 60 to 100 pounds consumes the same or even more caffeine than an adult, the health risks are enormous. It is amazing that children cannot have a cup of coffee in the home, but can ingest caffeine at school!

Overindulgence in caffeine has been linked to coronary heart disease, higher blood pressure, and lower heart rates in everyone, but is found in children at alarming levels.

Even diet soda, when consumed in vast quantitles, has been linked to Metabolic Syndrome, which represents a set of risk factors, including high blood pressure, low good cholesterol, and cardiovascular disease. There are other factors that contribute to metabolic syndrome, but the message is that drinking diet sodas does not get a person out of trouble, especially when the other parts of the diet are bad.

Another hazard of having soda vending machines is that children tend to replace their daily water consumption with soda consumption. When the only alternative is to drink from a suspect and unclean public tap, getting a mouthful of terrible tasting city water, children will opt for fluids from any other source that they can get hold of. Dehydration in children is an epidemic these days.

If schools replaced the soda in machines with natural juice or bottled water, children would at least get some water and fruit juice down throughout the day.

But it is difficult to determine whether the perks, income, or other offers that the major soda companies offer to schools will stop being a factor in decision making. Various exclusive contracts and deals actually help cash strapped schools stay solvent, and have been doing so for decades. A happy medium would be to allow for more healthy, natural fluids, no matter how they're packaged and sold.

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