Ep.15 The role of caffeine in promoting high-sugar food consumption in teens
May 03, 2023
Dr Jenny Gourgari
Caffeine consumption is common among teenagers. A lot of people think caffeine is just in coffee or tea. However, the most common source of caffeine intake in teens is soda !
Why teens crave caffeine? What is considered high and what is low caffeine intake consumption? What is the effect of caffeine in teens appetite for high sugar / low fat foods?
Listen to learn more ! The manuscript I present is : Temple JL, Dewey AM, Briatico LN. Effects of acute caffeine administration on adolescents. Exp Clin Psychopharmacol. 2010 Dec;18(6):510-20. doi: 10.1037/a0021651. PMID: 21186925.
Dr Gourgari is a pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine expert and weight loss coach for teens with more than 15 years of experience. She helps teens build healthy habits that last, so they can feel happier, be more confident and love their body again .
Caffeine consumption is common among teenagers. A lot of people think caffeine is just in coffee or tea. However, the most common source of caffeine intake in teens is soda !
Why teens crave caffeine? What is considered high and what is low caffeine intake consumption? What is the effect of caffeine in teens appetite for high sugar / low fat foods?
Listen to learn more ! The manuscript I present is : Temple JL, Dewey AM, Briatico LN. Effects of acute caffeine administration on adolescents. Exp Clin Psychopharmacol. 2010 Dec;18(6):510-20. doi: 10.1037/a0021651. PMID: 21186925.
Dr Gourgari is a pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine expert and weight loss coach for teens with more than 15 years of experience. She helps teens build healthy habits that last, so they can feel happier, be more confident and love their body again .
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Speaker 2:
This is the Lifestyle in Weight Loss for Teens podcast. If you are a mom and want to help your child who is struggling to lose weight, you are in the right place. If you are looking for healthy lifestyle tips, Dr Gorgary is here to help you understand the science around safe weight loss in teens and children, because what works for adult weight loss is not always the best for children. This podcast is for educational purposes only. Dr Gorgary does not provide medical, psychological or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems without consulting your own medical practitioner and now your host, Dr Jenny Gorgary.
Speaker 1:
Hello, hello, welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle in Weight Loss for Teens podcast. This is Dr Gorgary, and today I'm going to be presenting an interesting article that talks about the effects of acute caffeine administration on adolescents. This is also the title of the manuscript that I will be presenting today. It was done by Laura Bria-Tico and a team of researchers at the University of Buffalo. This research was published in Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology Journal in 2010. So let's get into that.
Speaker 1:
So we all know, or most of us have experienced, that when we drink coffee and which is the main source of caffeine we get an urge, we get this rush, we get this, let's go. We all are looking for in the morning, right? So one reason we all go to coffee is because we are looking to get this adrenergic stimulation. So we know that teenagers also get the same stimulation. However, what was not very well known is what is the effect of the different consumption levels of caffeine on these adrenergic cells and increases in the blood pressure. And also, we didn't know why teenagers tend to consume caffeine and whether that can actually affect the choice they make for snacks after they consume caffeine. So, in order to answer these questions, researchers did the following experiment they asked teenagers to come to the lab and they gave them to drink spray to juice or lemonade. They asked them which one do you like the most? And then they teenagers chose their favorite drink and then, before they give to them, they added extra caffeine or they added nothing like. Basically we call this lecaplacibol. So then they, after this, after they asked them to have the drink, then they told them to salad and then they put them on a bencrypto, choose what they would like to eat and rate their how much they like the different snacks. And they told them you can eat as much as you want from what you're going to have and because if you don't eat it we're going to throw it away. So they had different options to select from. They could select to have skittles and smarties, potato chips and Doritos, mmms and tweets. So they had like different options, that they were high sugar, low fat options, low sugar, high fat options and high sugar, high fat options.
Speaker 1:
So by doing that, they wanted to look whether the what they selected to eat after they had the drink with the caffeine was related to the amount of the caffeine that they had, and they did that both in Boys and Girls. They also asked them to fill up a questionnaire where they wrote down what food they had in the last 24 hours and what kind of exercise they had. And they also asked them another questionnaire to just select how frequently in the past week they had consumed certain foods. And they also asked them a questionnaire about their regular caffeine use, where they actually asked them how much frequently they had different types of beverages and particularly caffeinated beverages, and they wanted to see how much and how frequently they had those drinks. So let's see what they found out.
Speaker 1:
First of all, let me just say that in general in this particular study the total number of participants were 28 males and 26 females, that they were between the ages of 12 and 17 years old. So not a very big study but I would say a good size study. So from these teenagers, they had nine boys that they were low consumers of caffeine and 17 boys that were high consumers of caffeine and 26 girls that were and of those 17 had were low consumers and nine of them were high consumers. The way they used to classify every child, whether they were a high consumer or low consumer, was based on their responses from the caffeine questionnaire and basically what they reported that they were drinking and how much they were drinking it. So for the boys, the average caffeine and the high caffeine consumer group was 145 mg per day, and in girls, the high consumers had an average of 108 mg of caffeine every day.
Speaker 1:
What the researchers found was that the source of caffeine for the majority of the participants was soda, not coffee, right, isn't that surprising? I know, for adults the main source of caffeine is coffee, but for teenagers is soda. And let me just make a small pause here, if this is a surprising finding to you, to just tell you that the average caffeine that is included in soda is 40 mg per 12 ounces, in coffees approximately 100 mg per 5 ounces. Tea has 40 mg per 5 ounces. Chocolate only has 10 mg per ounce, and really the highest proportion of caffeine in drinks comes from energy drinks. The caffeine can be up to 150 mg per 12 ounce, so really significant.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so let's move forward. So what else did they found? So, as I mentioned, they asked them to go and select the different types of snacks and they said oh, just go ahead and eat what you like. And what they found interestingly was that the group of teenagers that was consuming higher amounts of caffeine tended to eat more high sugar, low fat snacks, compared to the group that had low caffeine. In addition to that, when they looked at their questionnaires the food questionnaires that they had filled out they found out that the group that had higher caffeine consumption had more total daily intake of food, that basically, they were consuming more calories in the day than the group that they had lower caffeine.
Speaker 1:
Now the question is why did this happen? As I mentioned earlier, the source of caffeine, the main source of caffeine in teenagers, is not from coffee. It comes from sodas and energy drinks. Those drinks not only have caffeine, but they also have sugar. So that could be one simple explanation because they go for caffeine, that is, they go for more sugar. That is one possible explanation. There is also another explanation, and that is that when you are having caffeine, you may reach out a high sugary snack. That's what this study suggests. Again, it's a small study. We can really generalize this conclusion to the whole population. However, it does give us some foot for thought. So what I would like you to take away from this study is that reexamine the amount of caffeine that you're getting every day and if you're a teenager listening to this, reexamine what kind of choices of drinks do you reach for when you're looking to get for extra caffeine. This study showed also that boys tended to have higher consumption of caffeine because it was more important to them to get energy, to get a rush, to have better athletic performance, compared to girls. Boys are at a little higher risk to get high caffeine consumption compared to girls.
Speaker 1:
Now, this study had certain limitations that we need to take into consideration when we are analyzing this data. First of all, as I mentioned, it was a relatively small, medium-sized study, so really not too many people participated, but it's a good size for this type of study. But definitely we can just apply these results to the general population, right. And also, they did not have teenagers that participated that consume really significant amount of caffeine like, let's say, 200, 300, 400 milligrams and see what the effects are. And, as you mentioned, the average was around 150 milligram for boys and 110 for girls, so really not super, super high levels of caffeine. And also, the majority of teenagers that participated in the study had normal weight, so we don't know what would happen if and how these choices would have been different in teenagers that had higher weight. However, I would say that it's even more interesting to see those behaviors in children that don't really struggle with their weight, because that tells you that the effects are even evident in all teenagers, or at least teenagers that potentially have healthier habits than others, despite the fact that they consume caffeine, and, in general, their recommendation from pediatricians is to always go for water. It is really the best source of hydration, not for caffeinated beverages that also have a lot of sugar. I didn't go into details about the other physiologic responses they get, but they, yes, they did get higher blood pressure and all that.
Speaker 1:
But since the focus of this podcast is really the healthy habit and, in particular, eating habits and we don't have much time I wanted to focus on the aspects that have to do with healthier snack choices, sugary intake and total intake of food. So that's all I had to present for you today. So my call to action and my take home message for you today is, first of all, examine how much caffeine do you consume every day, and you can just decide to do this simple experiment. Let's just say you just write down every week all the drinks that you have, whether it is soda, energy drink, tea, chocolate or coffee and then make an average. What's your average consumption in a week? And if it's about 100 milligram per day, I would encourage you to reconsider your intake and see how that may affect your routine and how that affect overall your healthy habits.
Speaker 1:
I'm going to talk more about the effects of caffeine on sleep and other aspects in future episodes, but if you are in the high consumer category of caffeine, pay attention also to your snack choices and especially pay attention to what do you actually reach for for snacks and does that study maybe apply to you? And do you consume a lot of high sugar snacks along with your caffeine drink? Take care. I hope you enjoyed this podcast and share it with your friends. If you did, bye for now.
Speaker 2:
If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, I invite you to come check out the Lift program. It's Dr Gorgary's 12-week coaching program for teens and their moms, where we take all this information, we apply it to your daily life and we work together so your teenager learns how to create a healthy lifestyle so they can feel happier, more confident, less stressed and love their body again. Visit the website at lifestyleforteenscom and click on the work with me and free resources to learn more about this program and get free help to start this journey right away. Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode of Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens.
