Teens, Sugar, and Anxiety

With many studies showing up to 1 in 5 teenagers suffer from a mental health disorder, Bournemouth University researchers looked for potential dietary explanations—and high sugar drinks topped the list.  No one is surprised by other research showing dietary connections with obesity and metabolic diseases, but this research raises further questions about both mechanisms and societal responses.  Within functional medicine circles, we have been aware of such potential mechanical connections and try our best to at least guide our patients and their parents towards healthier diets for this and a thousand other reasons.

Just to be clear, neither we in functional medicine nor these researchers are claiming that diet alone, much less an extra soft drink or two per day, are driving this mental health epidemic.  As individuals composed of body and spirit, we are far too complex to be determined by a single factor on an individual scale, let alone across all cases of mental health diagnoses.  Right now, in this post, I am simply arguing that diet and mental health appear to dance together in interactive patterns.  To be a little more scientific and less figurative, nutritional patterns and the emotional states of teenagers (and the rest of us) demonstrate a bidirectional interaction such that we can intervene in one and see benefits in both areas.

Let’s back up and consider this study before we return to application.  These researchers reviewed extensive data from other studies that had looked for connections between diet and mental health.  By using this combined data, they found a connection between the consumption of sugary drinks (sodas, energy drinks, sweetened tea or coffee, juices, and others) and rates of anxiety.  More sugar drinks correlated with more anxiety in teens.

Before any blame or excitement takes us to mistaken conclusions, we must remember that this is a retrospective survey, not a randomized placebo-controlled study attempting to prove causation.  These two outcomes occurred more often together, anxiety and sugary drinks.  Several possible explanations exist.  It could be random chance and no connection exists.  Anxiety could trigger a desire for more sugar.  A third unidentified factor could lead to an increase in both.  Or sugar drinks could be triggering anxiety.  We don’t know which is the actual case from this study.

Correlation studies like this should just drive us to continue researching in this direction to better understand which is cause and which is effect, as well as what might be the mechanisms to explain the connection.  Other studies do provide some possible clues.  We know that inflammation in different brain regions influence mental health conditions like depression and anxiety.  We know that high sugar diets increase inflammation in one’s body.  We know that nutrition affects our gut bacteria which also can affect our brains.  But we also know that depression and anxiety influence our tastes and preferences and cravings that drive some of our dietary choices.  These and other known facts don’t provide a final answer but do encourage scientists to keep digging in these areas.

For now, without a clear understanding of mechanisms and directions of causation, we can at least be on the lookout for unhealthy patterns of high sugar drink intake in our teen children and patients.  We know that high sugar consumption contributes to other metabolic conditions and should be addressed for that reason alone.  With this study, we can also ask ourselves if our teens also show any signs of anxiety in addition to the high sugar intake.  Then we can work to both lower sugar intake for its own sake and provide mental health interventions in those with clear anxiety issues.

Helping our teens have healthier, more abundant lives now and guiding them to healthier adult lives means we take the insights we have from science, pause to consider each teen’s emotional state, and come alongside them as parents and caregivers to optimize their nutrition and their emotional maturing.

 

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Original Article:

Karim Khaled, Nathalie Abdulbaki, Orouba Almilaji, Chloe Casey, Fotini Tsofliou. Sugar‐Sweetened Beverage Consumption and Anxiety Disorders in Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, 2026; 39 (1) DOI: 10.1111/jhn.70217

 

Thanks to Science Daily:

Bournemouth University. “Sugary drinks linked to rising anxiety in teens.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 18 February 2026. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/02/260218044624.htm>.

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Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.