It’s Time to Rethink Your Drink

About the Author: Dr. Paula Gustafson serves as the Chief Medical Officer at Major Health Partners, where she helped lead the development of the MHP Cardiometabolic Center and its innovative approach to preventive health. A board-certified Pediatrician and Lifestyle Medicine Physician, she is dedicated to empowering patients through evidence-based care, and sustainable behavior change. Her work reflects a deep passion for preventive care and improving long-term health outcomes across all ages.

Why are we still selling sugary beverages in schools when we already know better?
Walk into almost any school fundraiser, sports game, or pep rally, and you’ll find the same thing you’ve seen for decades — a cooler packed with sodas, sports drinks, and fruit punches. Nobody questions it. It’s just… normal. But here’s the thing: normal doesn’t mean right. When we take an honest look at what we know about children’s health, the numbers are hard to ignore. Approximately 34% of children in the United States are overweight or obese. That’s not a small issue tucked away in a health textbook — it’s a crisis happening right now in our schools and communities. And the drinks we’re selling at school events are part of the problem.

Sugary Drinks: A Hidden Source of Extra Calories
Most people don’t think of drinks as “food,” but they should. Just one 12-ounce can of soda packs up to 39 grams of sugar, nearly one-and-a-half times the amount of added sugars the American Heart Association recommends children consume in an entire day. Unlike food, drinks don’t make you feel full. You can down a soda in five minutes, and those 150 calories won’t have an impact on your eating the same way that food does. That means the calories from sugary drinks are essentially extra — layered on top of everything else a child eats in a day. Study after study has linked regular consumption of sugary drinks to weight gain, type 2 diabetes, tooth decay, and heart disease. We know this. The science is not new. So why are these drinks still being sold on school property?

It’s Time to Make an Honest Effort
Childhood obesity is not an abstract statistic. It is a real health crisis with real consequences — for children’s energy, self-esteem, long-term physical health, and quality of life. It is also largely preventable. Schools cannot solve this problem alone. But they can stop making it worse. Removing sugar-sweetened beverages from school events is not a radical idea. It’s a logical, evidence-based step that aligns with everything schools already say they value – health, education, and student well-being. We’ve already decided that some things don’t belong on school property because of the message they send and the harm they cause. It’s time to have that same honest conversation about sugary drinks.

It’s time to rethink your drink.