Are kids not supposed to drink coffee simply because it gets them “amped” and grown-ups don’t like dealing with kids who are “amped”? Or is coffee harmful to their widdle bodies?
My friend’s twelve year old daughter has developed a a taste for coffee. Now, she cuts it with so much milk and sugar that she’s really only getting about a half a cup of coffee for every serving, but still I find myself wanting to say “No! She’s twelve! Don’t let her drink coffee, it will harm her widdle body!”
Then I realize that I don’t actually have any hard facts to back up my alarm, so I come to the SDMB. This development is only a few days old, so if there are some hard facts to be gathered I will be able to plead my case before a habit has been formed.
What say Dopers?
In GQ looking for facts about possible harmful effects coffee may or may not have on a twelve year old. Not looking for IMHO discussion of whether or not it is appropriate to allow a child to drink coffee.
rather interested myself, i have been drinking coffee as long as I can remember, and I know my mom started drinking coffee pretty much as soon as she was off the teat, same as my dad. my brother doesnt like coffee, but likes tea.
So, if caffeine is the big evil, why is tea ok for children when coffee wouldnt be?
If it is ‘because it will stunt their growth’ not sure that is valid, my brother is well over 6 feet tall, and I was 5’7" until the whole calcium debacle a year and a half ago. Both of us were/are well over the supposed median of 5’7" male and 5’4" female median height.
“It’s usually presumed that a regular cup of coffee contains 100mg of caffeine but it may range between 40 and 176 mg and the mean is closer to 85mg. There’s probably less caffeine in a cup of tea - one study showed a median of 27mg per cup with a range of 8 to 91 mg.”
One thing to realize is that the half life for caffeine is much longer in children then in adults. The half life in adults is around 4 hours for caffeine, while young children it is MUCH higher. If I remember correctly, the half life for someone around 4 years is about 8 to 12 hours. So, the caffeine will effect children more, and for longer, then it will for adults.
One reason it could be harmful for kids and not adults is that kids are smaller. A kid who drinks a cup of coffee gets a lot more caffeine per pound of body weight than a larger adult drinking the same size cup of coffee.
There are lots of things that are harmless or necessary in small doses but harmful in large doses. Iron, as found in food and iron supplements, is an example. Iron supplements are the #1 poison that kills kids under 6 in the US. But that doesn’t mean foods containing iron or iron supplements aren’t safe for adults.
There are some cultures in which children are commonly allowed to drink coffee, notably Sweden, which has one of the highest levels of coffee consumption in the world. Other Scandanavian countries as well, I believe. That might provide some baseline data for studying the long term effects. Of course other peculiarities of the Scandanavian diet would be conflated with the results - Sweden also has one of the highest per-capita milk consumption rates in the world, for instance.
Alright, so I went to the literature and came up with a review article*
It basically states:
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[li]Mothers who ingested large amounts of caffeine while pregnant may result in newborn babies having classic symptoms of caffeine withdrawal, but no adverse long term health effects were noted[/li][li]“in utero caffeine exposure does not seem to translate into long-term effects on neurobehavioral development in the human child”[/li][li]For hyperactive children: “The consensus in the field is that for the treatment of ADHD, adjunctive caffeine is not contraindicated, but it is also not a viable replacement for the stimulants.”[/li][li]In normal children: In acute single dose studies, “low doses” (3 mg/kg) had negligible effects in normal children. High doses (10 mg/kg) tended to show significant improvements in tasks related to vigilance, and interestingly, significant increases in locomotor activity were also detected, whether measured objectively or by observer ratings."[/li][li]“Adverse effects reported by the children and significantly associated with caffeine were headache, stomachache and nausea.”[/li][li]“Caffeine produced dose-dependent improvements on a vigilance task (Test of Variables of Attention) and on a test of manual dexterity (Grooved Pegboard Test), but no change on two other cognitive tasks.”[/li][li]Withdrawal symptoms were noted for children who consumed 4 times their normal intake and then stopped.[/li][li]Their conclusion: “Overall, there continues to be little evidence that would warrant grave concern about the use of moderate doses of caffeine in most situations. There is evidence that individuals differ in their susceptibility to caffeine-related adverse effects, and that this may influence their usage patterns.[/li]The effects of caffeine in children seem to be modest and generally innocuous.”
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*F. X. Castellanos, J. L. Rapoport, Effects of caffeine on development and behavior in infancy and childhood: a review of the published literature, Food and Chemical Toxicology, Volume 40, Issue 9, September 2002, Pages 1235-1242.