Another good reason to eliminate soft drinks

Interesting article from MSN news:

Bone Wrecker

In the 1950s, children drank 3 cups of milk for every 1 cup of sugary drinks. Today that ratio is reversed: 3 cups of sugary drinks for every cup of milk. Tellingly, osteoporosis is a major health threat for 44 million Americans. Most experts now say that the real culprit is soda's displacement of milk in the diet, though some scientists believe that the acidity of colas may be weakening bones by promoting the loss of calcium.

Whatever the causes of bone loss, the group that stands to suffer the most harm is adolescent girls. In a study of 460 high schoolers in 2000, research at the Harvard School of Public Health found that girls who drank carbonated soft drinks were three times as likely to break their arms and legs as those who consumed other drinks.

Dark drinks such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Dr Pepper seemed to be even more dangerous than fruit-flavored sodas like Sprite: Girls who downed colas were five times as likely to break arms and legs in their teen years as girls who abstained from carbonated beverages. Grace Wyshak, PhD, a biostatistician and the study's lead researcher, believes something in colas is interfering with the body's ability to use calcium. This is a big problem, she says, "because girls will be more susceptible to fractures later in life if they don't acquire optimal bone mass in adolescence."