Girls drink more and more soft drinks as they get older, and their risk of becoming overweight may follow suit, new research suggests.
In a study that followed nearly 2,400 US girls for 10 years, researchers found that, on average, girls' consumption of regular soda rose two- to three-fold between the ages of 9 and 19.
And as soda intake climbed, so did girls' daily calories and body mass index (BMI) - a measure of weight in relation to height.
"We found that even when adjusting for overall caloric intake from all sources soda intake was associated with weight gain," lead study author Dr Ruth H. Striegel-Moore, of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, told Reuters Health.
The effect was modest, she said, but still important, given the growing problem of childhood obesity and the fact that soft drinks have no nutritional value beyond calories.
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