Nutrition Bytes

Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and sodium-rich foods are increasingly becoming commonplace in the diets of American children and adolescents. Aside from the well-characterized health outcomes such as obesity and diabetes, these foods pose direct risks in terms of increasing the likelihood of dental caries, elevated uric acid, and hypertension in children and adolescents as well as displacing foods necessary to healthy growth and development. The following two-part review examines consumption of sweetened beverages and sodium-rich foods in relationship to associations with immediate and long-term health effects, describes population subgroups that are especially susceptible, and proposes policy and individual-level prevention strategies.