OJPM> Vol.5 No.2, February 2015

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Motoyoshi Kubo¹, Yuji Nozu², Chie Kataoka², Masako Kudo³, Shiori Taniguchi³, Yuki Sato⁴, Naoko Nakayama⁵, Motoi Watanabe⁶

¹Faculty of Education, Utsunomiya University, Utsunomiya, Japan.
²Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan.
³Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan.
⁴Narita Junior High School, Tomiya, Japan.
⁵St. Luke’s International University, Tokyo, Japan.
⁶Hokkaido University of Education, Sapporo, Japan.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation between the consumption of non-alcoholic beverages (such as non-alcoholic beer, non-alcoholic cocktails, and non-alcoholic wine) and alcohol drinking behavior among Japanese youths. Data from the Japan Youth Risk Behavior Survey 2011 were analyzed. The study subjects were 9775 high school students (5026 males and 4749 females) randomly selected from the 10th to the 12th grade in 102 high schools throughout Japan. The results indicated that the percentage of youths who had consumed non-alcoholic beverages was 25.8% among males (11.5%: “one time”; 14.3%: “two or more times”) and 26.1% among females (12.2%: “one time”; 13.9%: “two or more times”), which suggested that at least one in four Japanese high school students had consumed non-alcoholic beverages. Those students that had consumed non-alcoholic beverages were at a significantly higher risk for alcohol-related behaviors, including “ever drank alcohol”, “current alcohol use”, “current frequent alcohol use”, and “chugging”, when compared with students who had never consumed non-alcoholic beverages. The risk for alcohol-related behaviors was higher for students who had consumed non-alcoholic beverages two or more times than for those who had consumed them one time. Specifically, the odds ratio for “ever drank alcohol” in the “one time” group was 5.16 (95% CI: 4.22 - 6.30) for males and 4.27 (95% CI: 3.53 - 5.16) for females, while it was markedly high for those in the “two or more times” group, with males at 9.78 (95% CI: 7.88 - 12.14) and females at 7.59 (95% CI: 6.20 - 9.29). The results of this study suggest that it is necessary to continuously ascertain the prevalence of non-alcoholic beverage consumption among Japanese youths. In addition, alcohol drinking prevention in youths requires attention be paid not only to their consumption of alcoholic beverages, but also to their consumption of non-alcoholic beverages.

Youth, Non-Alcoholic Beverage, Alcohol Drinking, National Survey

Kubo, M. , Nozu, Y. , Kataoka, C. , Kudo, M. , Taniguchi, S. , Sato, Y. , Nakayama, N. and Watanabe, M. (2015) Correlation between Non-Alcoholic Beverage Consumption and Alcohol Drinking Behavior among Japanese Youths. Open Journal of Preventive Medicine, 5, 31-37. doi: 10.4236/ojpm.2015.52004.