Caffeinated Kids

“Hi, I’ll have a Grande cappuccino with three shots of syrup and make it quick; my mom’s waiting for me.” It’s funny, but not really. The number of children under the age of twelve addicted to caffeine is staggering. Between pop, iced tea and chocolate, kids consume a lot of coffee in the average week.
Now many people would have read my article in the summer where I talked about my love of coffee, and all the antioxidant benefits that come along with it. This is by no means a retraction of what I said there! But children react differently to stimulants then adults do, and a nine or ten year old brain is simply unable to cope with the effects of caffeine.
Think about what happens when someone, even an adult, has too much caffeine. It becomes very difficult to concentrate, think clearly, or even sit still. Now think about how many kids in the school system have “learning difficulties” and “behavioral problems”, especially right after lunch.
Caffeine is also a diuretic. This means that kids who choose pop over water when it is hot out are much more likely to become dehydrated. Caffeine is acidifying to the system, throwing pH levels out of balance. Water is needed to right the scales again.
Both caffeine and the compounds required to carbonate soda tend to leach calcium and other minerals from the bones. We know now that measuring bone health of twelve-year-old girls can give a pretty good indication of who will have problems with osteoporosis later on in life. Bone density is influenced by dietary patterns very early in life.
How much caffeine are kids actually taking in over the course of a day? To put it in perspective, the average cup of coffee has between 60 and 150mg of caffeine (I’m assuming the difference is whether it was brewed at a bad restaurant or at my house, where the coffee is a meal unto itself). Decaf has 2-5mg, and tea has 40-80mg. Chocolate milk is 2-7mg; a 50gram chocolate bar can be between 3 and 64mg depending on the kind, a 12oz Coke is 64mg with Jolt Cola ringing in at 100mg. Quick math: if a 12oz Coke is 64mg of caffeine, how about those Super Big Gulp slurpees? I can feel my brain melting as I type the words.
While looking online for the above statistics, I found all kinds of websites making ridiculous claims about caffeine. Several stated that it is not addictive at all in average doses of less then four cups daily. Obviously I am imagining that nagging headache that starts up around noon if I don’t have my morning cup. Along this same line, I have heard complaints from parents that their kids seem irritable and sick every weekend. This is a bit of a change from the days when kids would seem to magically recover from illness as soon as Saturday morning arrived. Interestingly enough, these kids are the same ones that drink pop or iced tea at school every day. Coincidence?
Caffeine is not evil, even for children. It is found in foods naturally and is fine in small quantities. But it is mood altering and addictive. What other drugs do we so cavalierly offer to kids? Without getting fanatical about every piece of chocolate (organic dark chocolate, of course) the total amount of caffeine exposure for kids is something worth examining. There is an easy test to figure out if someone is addicted to something: take it away, and watch carefully what happens.