A new study of Boston high-school students has shown that kids who drink a lot of soda (or "pop" for all of you from backwards places that don't call soda the right thing) are also significantly more likely to become violent. The study, conducted by David Hemenway and Sara Solnick, involved following around 1,878 Boston highschool students and keeping track of their soft drinking habits. The results showed that kids who soft drank more than 5 non-diet cans a week were 9-15% more likely to "act aggressively" than their peers who just stuck to respecting the pouch.
"Heavy use of carbonated non-diet soft drinks was significantly associated with carrying a gun or knife and violence towards peers, family members and partners," they say in the paper, and the fact that they chose the word "use" clearly shows that they mean business. Obviously, they don't want to go too far into saying that soda causes the violence, but it's worth mentioning that the soda-violence boost remains even after controlling for things like age, race, body mass index, tobacco use, drug use, and of course, family dinners. No, but really, and they listed that one last too.