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Putting a Stop to Soda Pop
Why Too Much Is Hurting Your Kids
By Kelly Burgess
A few years ago, Dr. Jim Landers had a 15-year-old patient whose teeth were so rotted that virtually all of them had to be extracted. The boy and his mother both sat in Dr. Lander's office – with 64-ounce sodas in their hands – and insisted the boy's soft drink consumption had nothing to do with his dental problems.
Dr. Landers begs to differ. In fact, he is begging schools to take soda pop out of their vending machines so that kids have even less access to it. Dr. Landers is a member of the Wyoming Dental Association, and at his urging, they have started a "No Pop in Schools" campaign aimed at improving not just dental health but overall health.
"In this day and age with the knowledge and technology available to us, we should have virtually no tooth decay," he says. "Instead, we're seeing more. It's crazy what we're doing to these children, and nobody seems to care that they're ruining their health."
Katie Bark, nutritionist and special project coordinator for the Team Nutrition Program at the Montana State University Department of Health and Human Development, says the amount of soft drinks that children consume these days is unprecedented in history. The Center for Science in the Public Interest reports that the average 12- to 19-year-old male drinks more than two cans of soda per day, while the average female consumes a little more than one can a day. Each of those 12-ounce cans of pop contains 10 teaspoons of sugar – the amount the USDA recommends a healthy person limit themselves to per day.