Kids, teens and young adults who don’t drink water end up guzzling almost 100 extra calories a day from sugary beverages, on average, according to a new study in JAMA Pediatrics.
While the study reported that metrics such as sex or federal income-to-poverty ratio did not have a statistically significant impact on how many calories these youths consumed when they didn’t drink H2O, their race/ethnic group did appear to have an affect. For example, white, non-Hispanic children who didn’t sip any water consumed an extra 122 calories from sugary beverages — twice as many as the Hispanic children in this study who took in an extra 61 calories.
“These are dietary benefits that are probably going to be very translatable between kids and young adults, and older adults, in which if you’re not drinking water, then you’re going to have to get your hydration from somewhere,” added Rosinger, who is also a professor of biobehavioral health and anthropology. And that can include sweetened beverages, coffee laced with sugar, or alcohol.