Study finds Boston Toddlers Drink Their Fair Share of Caffeine

It’s no surprise that Bostonians love their coffee. (Boston does run on Dunkin’ as so many coffee cups around the city point out.) But what may be a bit more surprising is the amount of youngster that are also sipping cups of joe.

As a study by Boston Medical Center recently pointed out, 15% of toddlers (age 2) in the Boston area consume as much as four ounces of coffee a day. Looking at data that was collected from 315 mother-child pairs in a study focused on infant weight gain and diet, researchers were surprised to find many mothers also reported giving their children coffee to drink. At age 1, 2.5% of children had begun consuming coffee. At age two, the statistics jumped to 15% with the average daily consumption equaling 1.09 ounces per day.

Our results show that many infants and toddlers in Boston – and perhaps in the US – are being given coffee and that this could be associated with cultural practices,” said the study’s principal investigator Anne Merewood, PhD, MPH, director of the Breastfeeding Center at BMC and associate professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine.

The study points out that “while the US has not provided guidelines on coffee consumption for children, previous studies suggest that coffee and caffeine consumption among children and adolescents is associated with depression, type 1 diabetes, sleep disturbances, substance abuse and obesity.”

The statement released by BMC points out that the reasons for childhood caffeine consumption may be cultural. As previous international research has shown “children between birth and 5 years of age are given coffee in some countries, including Cambodia, Australia and Ethiopia. Additional studies have also shown that it is not uncommon for children raised in the Hispanic culture to also be given coffee.”

What’s good news for coffee chains may be bad news for these children, however. Although coffee consumption in young children hasn’t been examined extensively, one study did indicate that 2 year olds who drank coffee or tea had triple the odds of being obese by the time they reached kindergarten.