There are a couple of recent studies that shed some light on caffeine and fast food consumption among young children

In the first body of research,  the team set out to determine how much caffeine children are consuming and if the advent of energy drinks has increased this trend.

Researchers discovered that 73% of children consume caffeine in some form or another each and every day. However, surprisingly this trend hasn’t changed significantly over the last decade– they compared data from 1999 to more recent data gathered in 2009-2010.Although energy drinks did not exist in the latter part of the 20th century, children consumed more soda than they currently do. The result is that nothing has changed – while coffee and energy drinks among children have increased, sodas have decreased.

Food Prices and BMI

The second study analyzed how prices of fresh vegetables and fruit may or may not affect obesity among children from infancy up to age 5. Researchers gathered data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort and compared this data with local food price data.

Not surprisingly, higher fresh fruit and vegetable prices were associated with higher BMI. What IS surprising, however, is that higher fast food prices are also associated with higher BMI among children; researchers expected the data to show an inverse relationship between higher fast food prices and BMI.

The research team points out that setting reasonable standards for fruit and vegetable pricing could significantly impact obesity rates among children.