Reducing sugary drinks in homes — not schools — has most benefit
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Reducing access to sugar-sweetened beverages at home is more effective at curbing children’s intake of the sugary drinks than reducing access to them in schools, according to a study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Intake of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) has been connected to increased risks for cardiometabolic health issues, and such drinks have been marketed to children using the same tactics as cigarette companies.
Study co-author Matt Kasman, PhD, assistant research director at the Brookings Institution Center on Social Dynamics and Policy, has explored the effects of increased taxes on sugary drinks in the past.
“Our study was motivated by the outsized importance of early childhood in determining lifelong health, and by our participation in an initiative underway at the NIH to bring unique data resources to bear on this problem,” Kasman told Healio.
“Excessive sugar intake can not only have direct, negative effects on developing bodies, but these can be compounded by the formation of preferences, habits, and physical or psychological dependence that drive later behavior,” Kasman said. “As sugar-sweetened beverages are the largest source of added sugar in American diets, finding ways to reduce their consumption among children is a promising strategy to promote overall health.”
Kasman and colleagues developed an agent-based model through a sophisticated computational simulation research tool that represented key dynamics in the lives of children. Simulated children were followed between the ages of 2 and 7, spending time in different settings such as home and school. The researchers measured the availability of sugar-sweetened beverages in these settings.
“We used this model as a virtual ‘policy laboratory,’ experimentally exploring what changes to different settings or circumstances might do to overall consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages in a much broader and more comprehensive way than is possible to do in the real world,” Kasman said.
Among the simulations, reducing SSB availability in homes resulted in the largest consumption decrease, and removing any and all access to SSBs in the home resulted in consumption of 1.23 fewer servings per week on average, a reduction of approximately 60%. Removing SSBs in schools and child care centers had a reduction of only about 40%.
“Recent interventions aimed at reducing sugar-sweetened beverage consumption have tended to be most successful when targeted at school or child care settings,” Kasman said. “Our research suggests that there is quite a bit of untapped potential for effecting positive change by reducing the availability of sugar-sweetened beverages at home — the challenge is in finding ways to do this.”
Kasman added that it was important “not to frame the problem as a failure of parental responsibility, thus placing blame and alienating people rather than positively influencing behavior.”
“A more promising strategy is to identify context-specific, system-level barriers to reducing consumption in homes,” Kasman said. “Many American families have had to contend with tap water that is unsafe or unpalatable for extended periods of time. In these situations, some might find that it is easier or less costly to procure sugar-sweetened beverages than bottled water, which for them may be the key factor driving what is available and consumed at home by children.
“Addressing this will likely require action that encompasses policy areas such as infrastructure, food systems, and environmental regulations.”
Kasman added that the application of a computational simulation approach to children’s consumption of SSBs is “a first step, but not our last one.”
“We are continuing to improve our research tools and use them to provide actionable insights in this area,” Kasman said.
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