ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 TAG: 9701150084
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: The New York Times
Over the last several years, research has shown that drinking cup after cup of juice can cause chronic diarrhea, abdominal pain and, in extreme cases, malnutrition. But in a new study, a pediatrician reports that as little as 12 ounces a day puts children at risk of obesity and short stature.
Children can easily reach this limit if they have a cup of juice with breakfast and a juice pack with lunch, said Dr. Barbara Dennison, lead author of the study and a pediatrician at Mary Inogene Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, N.Y. ``What many people think of as a moderate amount of juice isn't,'' said Dennison, whose report appears in the current issue of the journal Pediatrics.
Dr. Ronald Kleinman, chief of the pediatric gastrointestinal and nutritional unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said that the study is the first to associate excess juice consumption with obesity and that it confirms earlier evidence linking juice with growth problems.
For her study, Dennison asked the parents of 116 healthy 2-year-olds and 107 healthy 5-year-olds to write down everything the children ate for seven days. She also measured the children's height and body fat.
She found that the children who drank 12 or more ounces of juice a day were more likely to be either short or obese. Forty percent of these children were in less than the 20th percentile of height for their age and sex, compared with just 14 percent of those who drank less juice.
The children who drank the most juice were also more likely to be obese. Fifty-three percent of them had a body-mass index in the 75th percentile for their sex and age, as against 32 percent of the other children. The index, the ratio of weight in kilograms to height in centimeters squared, is used to measure obesity in adults.
The most curious finding was that excessive juice consumption was associated with too much and too little growth. Dennison thinks that the difference was determined by the children's ability to regulate caloric intake.
The children who grew slowly filled up on juice at the expense of more nutritious foods, like milk, whole fruit and vegetables. The obese children probably did not cut back on other foods, she said, and juice represented a calorie overload.
Timothy Willard, a spokesman for the National Food Processors Association in Washington, said it was premature for parents to cut back on children's juice consumption based on the study.
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