Many popular soda pops contain caffeine - sometimes as much as a third the amount found in a standard cup of coffee. The soda pop manufacturers openly admit that their colas have caffeine - there are even "non-caffeine" brands. You may be surprised, however, to learn that there is caffeine even in the fruity pops and the clear (check out Mellow Yellow, Mountain Dew or Sun Drop Regular) ones. There is a lot of caffeine in soda pop. Caffeine is stimulating and it is addictive.

Does it seem the correct thing to allow our children to consume large amounts of an addictive stimulant? I would not find it terribly unusual to find that an early addiction to caffeine might mature into a full addiction to caffeine all throughout life. Once hooked it's difficult to get clean. Just ask anyone who has tried to stop drinking coffee. You'll hear about the headaches, irritability and maybe even some stomach problems associated with stopping. Just because caffeine is legal doesn't mean that it's a good thing to let our children use.

The soft drink industry agrees that caffeine causes the same effects in children as adults. I would think that pop cans should boldly list the amount of caffeine in each can, but they don't. It is true that some manufacturers will say that their soda contains caffeine few (if any) actually tell us how much. That seems to violate the intent of all the labeling laws - but they get away with it all the same.

Avram Goldstein is professor emeritus of pharmacology at Stanford University. He said, "There is no way for a parent to know how much caffeine their kids are getting." If the "average" can of soda pop provides 35mg of caffeine and a child drinks 6 a day, he or she is consuming more caffeine than you'll find in one or two cups of coffee. Caffeine is a naturally occurring substance, but so is strychnine.

Why is caffeine in the soda pop? The industry says that caffeine's slightly bitter taste enhances the other flavors in the soda pop formula. They have been adding caffeine to soda pop for over a hundred years. Tradition seems to justify it. That kind of logic would make it ok to sell any product just because they've "always" sold it - even if there is unarguable proof that it's dangerous.

However, the argument about using caffeine for flavor is a bunch of baloney. Someone took a group of people who regularly drank caffeine-containing soda pop. They fed them a caffeine-free version and more than 90% of them could NOT detect a difference between the caffeine-containing and the caffeine-free versions. It seems, therefore, that the presence of caffeine has another - less lofty - purpose.

Caffeine is addictive. Isn't it convenient that people can actually become physically and emotionally dependent of their soft drink? I know it happens. Yesterday, the sales associate at a large appliance store waited on me for over twenty minutes - all the while grasping her can of cola (and sipping from it, of course). She couldn't be away from her "FIX" for even the few minutes it took to wait on one customer. (note: I did NOT buy anything from that store)

The fact that kids have withdrawal signs and symptoms when the caffeine is stopped is a good indication that something has been profoundly disturbed in the brain. However, there is little good research on the effects of caffeine on kids' developing brains. Again, I fall back on my earlier comments - it seems intuitively obvious that regular exposure to a substance that causes addictions is wrong - regardless of what the studies may show. In fact, I have a serious question about the morality of even doing a study to prove one way or the other that caffeine is harmful in the end - especially when it is started so young.
How would you choose the subjects for a study?  If the caffeine turned out to be a dangerous substance for youngsters (as I believe it would) how would you compensate the test subjects who suffered some harm from consuming the caffeine during the study? I wouldn't want my kids in that kind of study. Yet, I can see the headlines "Wanted, children ages 8 to 16 to participate in a study about the long-term effects of caffeine on the developing brain. All soda pop and brain scans will be provided free of charge."