Teens who drink more than five cans fizzy soft drinks per week - less than one per day - are significantly more likely to commit violence or carry weapons, suggests research in Injury Prevention, part of the British Medical Journals.  

U.S. lawyers have successfully argued in the past that a defendant accused of murder had diminished capacity as a result of switching to a junk food diet, a legal precedent that became known as the "Twinkie Defense" – and, since it is nearing Halloween, delicious, sugary Twinkies were also an allegory for paranormal activity in "Ghostbusters", which had just about as much science as surveys based on 1,878 teens from 22 public schools in Boston, Massachusetts. The teens were part of the Boston Youth Survey, a biennial survey of 9th to 12th graders (14 to 18 year olds). 

The teens were asked how many carbonated, non-diet soft drinks they had drunk over the past seven days. Intake was measured in cans (355 ml or 12 ounces) and responses categorized according to quantity. The responses were divided into two groups: those drinking up to four cans over the preceding week (low consumption); and those drinking five or more (high consumption). Just under one in three (30%) respondents fell into the high consumption category. 

The researchers then looked at potential links to violent behavior in this group by asking if they had been violent towards their peers, a sibling, or a partner, and if they had carried a gun or knife over the past year. Responses were somehow 'assessed' in the light of factors likely to influence the results, including age and gender, alcohol consumption, and average amount of sleep on a school night. 

Those who drank 5 or more cans of soft drinks every week were significantly more likely to have drunk alcohol and smoked at least once in the previous month. But even after controlling for these and other factors, heavy use of carbonated non-diet soft drinks was significantly associated with carrying a gun or knife, and violence towards peers, family members and partners. 

BMJ publishes spoof articles in its Christmas issue but it's only October so it seems they are not kidding. Coca-Cola will be thrilled to find they are being implicated as a gateway drug to gang violence in their 125th year of existence.

The findings were divided into four categories of consumption and the researchers were able to see a clear dose-response relationship across all four measures. Just over 23% of those drinking one or no cans of soft drink a week carried a gun/knife, rising to just under 43% among those drinking 14 or more cans. The proportions of those perpetrating violence towards a partner rose from 15% in those drinking one or no cans a week to just short of 27% among those drinking 14 or more. 

Similarly, violence towards peers rose from 35% to more than 58%, while violence towards siblings rose from 25.4% to over 43%.

In all, for those teens who were heavy consumers of non-diet carbonated soft drinks, the probability of aggressive behavior was 9 to 15 percentage points higher - the same magnitude as the impact of alcohol or tobacco - the findings showed. "There may be a direct cause-and-effect-relationship, perhaps due to the sugar or caffeine content of soft drinks, or there may be other factors, unaccounted for in our analyses, that cause both high soft drink consumption and aggression," conclude the authors.