According to the National Soft Drink Association (NSDA), consumption of soft drinks is now over 600 12-ounce servings (12 oz.) per person per year. Since 1978, soda consumption in the us has tripled for boys and doubled for girls. Young males age 12-29 are the biggest consumers at over 160 gallons per year-that's almost 2 quarts per day. At these levels, the calories from soft drinks contribute as much as 10 percent of the total daily caloric intake for a growing boy.

In 1998 the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) warned the public that soft drink companies were beginning to infiltrate our schools and kid clubs. For example, they reported that Coca-Cola paid the Boys & Girls Clubs of America $60 million to market its brand exclusively in over 2000 facilities. Fast food companies selling soft drinks now run ads on Channel One, the commercial television network with programming shown in classrooms almost every day to eight million middle, junior and high school students. In 1993, District 11 in Colorado Springs became the first public school district in the us to place ads for Burger King in its hallways and on the sides of its school buses. Later, the school district signed a 10-year deal with Coca-Cola, bringing in $11 million during the life of the contract. This arrangement was later imitated all over Colorado. The contracts specify annual sales quotas with the result that school administrators encourage students to drink sodas, even in the classrooms. One high school in Beltsville, Maryland, made nearly $100,000 last year on a deal with a soft drink company.

Fifty years ago the average serving size for a soft drink was a six-ounce bottle. Today, soft drinks are sold in twenty ounce bottles and are consumed in much larger amounts courtesy of the large size of soda fountain drinks available at most stores and restaurants

Women who drink four or more cola beverages per week have a higher risk of developing the bone disease osteoporosis, finds a new study, landing another blow on fizzy drinks makers.

Regular cola consumption was linked to lower bone mineral density in all women studied, regardless of other factors such as smoking, alcohol consumption and calcium intake, researchers found.

Low bone mineral density increases the risk of osteoporosis, also known as brittle bone disease.

The news is another hammer blow to soft drinks makers, already struggling against falling fizzy drinks sales as consumers shift to healthier, non-carbonated beverages.

The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, used dietary questionnaires from more than 2,500 people who were part of an osteoporosis study in the US. Their average age was around 60 years.

The results were similar for regular, diet and decaffeinated colas. "The more cola women drank, the lower their bone mineral density was," said Katherine Tucker, the lead researcher and from Tufts University.

Men appeared to be unaffected, despite drinking slightly more cola per week on average.

Suspicions on what may cause cola to damage bone density initially rested on an ingredient called phosphoric acid. Tucker called for more controlled studies on this.

"Physiologically, a diet low in calcium and high in phosphorus may promote bone loss, tipping the balance of bone remodelling toward calcium loss from the bone. Although, some studies have countered that the amount of phosphoric acid in cola is negligible compared to other dietary sources such as chicken or cheese."

Another reason researchers suspected phosphoric acid was because it is not generally present in non-cola beverages. Other fizzy drinks that were not cola-based did not appear to affect bone density, the study found.

Cola drinks Coca-Cola and Pepsi remain two of the biggest-selling soft drink brands in the world. Cola made up more than 70 per cent of fizzy drinks consumed by those taking part in the recent osteoporosis study.

Consumption of carbonated soft drinks, although now stagnating in mature markets, rose by 300 per cent in the US alone between 1960 and 1990.
The industry has begun to market so-called stimulant soft drinks, which usually consist of higher-than-usual levels of caffeine, along with other compound stimulants. According to an article published in The Lancet, December 2000, the Irish government ordered "urgent research" into the effects of so-called "functional energy" or stimulant soft drinks after the death of an 18-year-old who died while playing basketball. He had consumed three cans of "Red Bull," a stimulant soft drink. The article noted there have been reports of a rise in aggressive late-night violence occurring when people switch to these drinks while drowsy from too much alcohol. The resulting violence was so pervasive that some establishments in Ireland have refused to sell stimulant drinks. The entire European community has taken the problem seriously enough to ask the EU's scientific community to examine stimulant sodas and their effect on food and health safety, but no such outcry has been heard in the us.