The Menino
administration will be pleased to hear about this latest study coming out of
the University of Vermont. A survey
meant to gauge the overall level of youth violence in the Boston area yielded
unexpected results when David Hemenway,
Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center was asked by a colleague
to include some questions about diet and behavior.
The study was based
of data taken from 1,878 high school students throughout 22 public schools in
the area. Sara Solnick, of the UVM
Department of Economics and former student of Hemenway's, found that high soda
consumption in subjects correlated with increased aggression. This included being significantly more likely
to have carried a knife or gun and acted violently towards peers, family
members or partners.
At first the effect
of the "soft drink variable" was expected to be erased after allowing
for controls like alcohol and tobacco consumption, said Solnick when speaking
with Sugar Rush, "but we were
surprised to see it was a visible effect on top of that." Frequent soda consumption still linked with a
9 to 15 percent rise in probability of violent actions.
However, Solnick
hastened to add that more research was needed, "I don't want to speculate
ahead of the data but there is a connection though - we need to take a look and
see where it goes." To do that, more
studies would have to be conducted on other populations - at the moment, even
if it's not a cause and effect relationship, the soft drink variable could
still function as an indicator of violent tendencies. "Youth violence is a complex
issue," she continued, "but this study has shown another possible
factor that people haven't really focused on yet."
Known as the
"Twinkie Defense" the concept linking junk food and aggression has
been used before. It got its name from the newspapers covering the 1978 case of Dan White, who was accused of the murders of
San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. claimed he had
"diminished capacity" to understand his actions after becoming
depressed and switching to a junk food diet.
If the results of
the "Twinkie Defense" paper continue in the current direction, the
likes of Governor Patterson and Mayor Bloomberg could have a small vindication
coming their way.
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