Are Sippy Cups Used Too Often?
N E W Y O R K, Feb. 15 -- The unedited, uncorrected transcript below is from Good Morning America's segment on sippy cups, which aired on Feb. 15.
ABCNEWS' CHARLIE GIBSON:Welcome back to the Good Morning America day care center. We have anumber of kids here joining us this morning and I suspect all ofthese kids, probably like yours, at one point or another, had one ofthose sippy cups, the little cups with the holes in the--in the lipfrom which kids drink. But there was a Wall Street Journal articlethis week that caught our eye because some medical experts areraising concerns about whether these cups can promote tooth decay oreven speech problems. Joining us this morning, Dr. Julie Barna,she's from the Academy of General Dentistry. Also with us, BrendaLiistro, who is with Playtex, the leading manufacturer of theseno-spill cups. And joining us also, parenting contributor AnnPleshette Murphy, and as I mentioned, a number of children, probablyall raised with these cups.But Ann, give me some sense of what the controversy is here.
GOOD MORNING AMERICA'S ANN PLESCHETTE MURPHY:
Well, the journal piece reported on a study that was originally donein Germany, which showed that there was a correlation between toothdecay and the use of these cups. They did not say that it caused thetooth decay, but the implication was that, like a bottle, which ifyou have a child drinking from a bottle, drinking sweetened juice anddrinking milk all day long, it can cause tooth decay. We know this,this is established, that the sippy cups are more like a bottle thanlike a cup. And so, one of the things that happened was that theythen responded, the dentists responded, and Julie will talk aboutthat, but speech pathologists were saying that because the mouth doesnot get exercise the same way they do when they drink from a cup,that some of the speech problems that speech pathologists wereseeing, they felt, were exacerbated by the use of these cups.
GIBSON::All right. Let me take those one at a time, and Dr. Barna, let mestart with you. Why in the world would the cup cause the toothdecay? It seems to me it's the juice or the sugary drink inside thatwould be causing it.
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