Too Young for Coffee?
The drink is cool, and kids like to guzzle it on the way to school. That's a grande problem.
We’ve banned soda from schools, demonized juice boxes, branded whole milk a threat. And yet, even as we fret about childhood obesity, our kids are guzzling high-fat, high-sugar coffee drinks at a growing rate. In most neighborhoods, it’s easier to find a Starbucks than a library. So when Michele Simon, director of the Center for Informed Food Choices, a group that promotes organic foods in Oakland, California, calls coffee drinks a “gateway drug” that hooks naive children on caffeine, it turns out she isn’t exaggerating by much. With the president of the Massachusetts School Nurse Organization noting caffeine-induced jitters among students, it’s time to wake up and smell the Frappuccino.
“They feel nervous and agitated,” says Marie DeSisto, president of the nurses’ group and a nurse herself. From her perch at Waltham High School, she sees kids as young as 14 carrying enormous cups into school in the morning. Then she sees them a few hours later, when they aren’t feeling quite so sophisticated. “Some of them are using coffee instead of having breakfast,” she explains. “A lot of times, you’ll see them having headaches around 10 or 11. They get the burst of energy or stimulation, and they don’t have any food in their stomachs. It affects their cognitive ability, and it affects their behavior.”
Health problems aside, she adds, there’s the expense. “They should do that in math class – see what their coffee habit is costing them.”
While the students have their calculators out, they might also want to add up the calories – or maybe not. Dr. Frank Greer, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on nutrition, is “concerned” about the fat and sugar in blended drinks, many of which clock in at 400 calories or more. “I bet there are not many kids drinking their coffee black,” he says.
Statistics don’t exist on who drinks what, but if you snoop you’ll see kids going for “coffee” that’s more milkshake than cup of joe. As one 17-year-old told me, “black coffee – yuck!” But there’s no doubt consumption is rising. Among children aged 13 to 17, the percentage of meals or snacks that included coffee rose 20 percent from 2004 to 2006 (to 6 percent), according to the NDP Group, a retail-consulting firm in Port Washington, New York. And the percentage of people 18 to 24 who drink coffee jumped from 16 percent in 2003 to 37 percent in 2007, reports Joseph F. DeRupo, director of communications for the New York-based National Coffee Association. (No one’s keeping numbers on preschool drinkers, but a 2003 New Yorker cartoon that showed a mother pushing two kids in a stroller captured the concept: “She thinks I think it’s real latte,” one child told the other, “but I know decaf when I taste it.”)
“Coffee is becoming cool again,” DeRupo says. And, hey, we know now it doesn’t even stunt growth! When asked about concern over pediatric coffee consumers, DeRupo extols the drink’s health benefits. “There are studies showing that coffee has a pretty significant protective effect against type 2 diabetes,” he says, then pointing to yet other research showing it may help prevent cognitive decline in elderly men and liver damage and liver cancer.
DeRupo was making coffee sound so beneficial I wondered if we ought to push it. No dessert unless you finish your coffee, young man! “Should we make them drink it?” I asked.
DeRupo demurred, saying that’s a decision for parents and pediatricians. But they may soon be outnumbered, both by coffee shops – whose US numbers have grown from 12,600 in 2000 to 21,400 in 2005, according to the market-research firm Mintel International Group – and by celebrities. Many are rarely captured by paparazzi without a dog, baby, or designer bag in one hand and a coffee in the other. And it doesn’t help when trendsetters like Mary-Kate Olsen regale interviewers with tales like this: “When I was younger, on weekends, my mom would make us pancakes with our initials on them and then a tiny cup of coffee,” she told W magazine. “I remember at 10 sneaking my own coffee and pouring a ton of sugar in and going up to the playroom and drinking it.”
Uh-oh. That’s sure to launch a thousand juvenile habits. Maybe it’s time concerned adults fight back. How about an anti-coffee public service campaign aimed at appearance-conscious youth: “Got stained teeth?”
Beth Teitell, a Boston-based writer, contributes regularly to the Globe Magazine. E-mail her at bteitell@gmail.com. 