Five-year-olds’ consumption of sweetened beverages could give an indication of their weight status for the subsequent ten years, according to a new study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Authors of this latest study examined intake of various beverages in a sample of 166 girls in central Pennsylvania, every two years, across a ten-year period.

They found that girls who consumed two or more 8 oz servings of sweetened beverages a day at the age of five ‘were more likely to be overweight than were girls classified with lower intakes over the study period’.

Specifically, 16.1 per cent of five-year-old girls who drank one serving or less were overweight, peaking at 24.2 per cent at age nine, before declining to 18.5 per cent at 15. Of those who drank two or more servings of sweetened beverages at age five, 38.5 per cent were overweight, reaching 53.9 per cent at the age of 11, and 32 per cent at 15.