A man and a child eat next to bottled drinks at a food stand in Mexico City September 10, 2013.
A man and a child eat next to bottled drinks at a food stand in Mexico City September 10, 2013. Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto's tax reform proposals appear toughest on Mexico's bottlers, who would be hit by a levy that the government hopes will collect close to $1 billion a year. The government plans to apply a 1 peso per liter ($0.076) excise on sugary drinks, weighing on bottlers like Coca-Cola FEMSA, Arca Continental and Pepsi bottler Cultiba. Picture taken September 10, 2013. Reuters

Sugary drinks are good only for your tongue, not your brain or memory, warn health experts. They may ruin your teeth, bones, and lead to weight gain in adults as well as children. In a new study conducted by the University of Southern California in United States, it was proved that it can also impact your children's memory, according to NDTV.com.

The study was published in the journal Hippocampus. A team of experts experimented with adolescent rats to see what sugary drinks do to their brain, mental activity and spatial memory ability. Scott Kanoski, corresponding author of the study and an assistant professor at the University of Southern California in the U.S., said that "the brain is especially vulnerable to dietary influences during critical periods of development, like adolescence," according to The Times of India.

About 35 to 40 percent of the rats' calories were sourced from sugar or High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). In a comparative study, they added sugars that constitute 17 percent of the total calories consumed by teenagers in U.S. on an average, according to Science Daily. Adolescent rats that did not consume sugar or even adult rats that did could survive without the problem.

The rats were then tested in mazes that investigated their spatial memory ability. Adolescent rats were given huge quantities of liquid solutions with sugar or high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in dense concentrations. They had memory problems and brain inflammation, and also became pre-diabetic. However, neither adult rats nor those who kept away from sugar had those problems. Adolescent rats that had imbibed the sugary beverages, particularly HFCS, did worse on the test than any other group, which could have led to the neuro-inflammation in the hippocampus, which is a part of the temporal lobe located deep inside the brain that controls memory formation, said Kanoski. He said that refined carbohydrates, especially those taken in soft drinks and other beverages, could even cause "metabolic disturbances." If taken in excess before adulthood, then consuming sugar-sweetened drinks also disturbs our brain's ability to function normally and remember all the information around us, according to Healthcanal.com. Every child is affected in learning and remembering information when he or she consumes sugary drinks.