Researchers said sugary drinks were to blame for 133 000 diabetes deaths worldwide in one year. Photo by Omar Torres/Agence France-Presse. According to the study, almost 45,000 people throughout the world died from cardiovascular diseases caused by consumption of sugary drinks and 6,450 people died as a result of cancers associated with the beverages.
Advertisement
Researchers from Tufts University discovered that people who drink just one or more sugar-sweetened beverage (like soda) a day are at an increased risk of developing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. The outliers are Japan, where it’s estimated sweet beverages were responsible in 2010 for less than 1 percent of deaths in people aged over 65, and Mexico, where 24,000 deaths in total were linked to sugary drinks in the same year.
“Among the 20 countries with the highest estimated sugar-sweetened beverage-related deaths, at least 8 were in Latin America and the Caribbean, reflecting the high intakes in that region of the world”, said Gitanjali Singh, Ph.D., lead author of the study and research assistant professor at the Friedman School. According to researchers, a nation’s frequency of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer was associated with the general quantity of sugar available in the country.
Mozaffarian pointed to a preliminary report released earlier this month showing an average reduction of six percent in sugary drink consumption in Mexico, which passed a 10 percent tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in 2014.
The estimate of consumption was drawn from 62 dietary surveys administered to 611,971 volunteers from 1980 to 2010 across 51 countries and from other information such as data on national availability of sugar in 187 countries.
Mozaffarian continues, “Some population dietary changes, such as increasing fruits and vegetables, can be challenging due to agriculture, costs, storage, and other complexities”. Extracted juices from real fruits were excluded as samples. It does find chronic disease attributed to sugar-sweetened beverages more common in younger adults than in their elders.
“I think the real takeaway here is that with the added sugary beverages, there are no health benefits”, Phillips said.
The study analysed data of sodas, sports drinks, fruit drinks, sweetened iced teas and homemade sugary drinks.
The dean of Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts University in Boston goes on to say, “It should be a global priority to substantially reduce or eliminate sugar-sweetened beverages from the diet”.
Advertisement
The impact of sugar-sweetened beverages varied greatly between populations. There is therefore an urgent need for strong global prevention programs dealing with consumption of these unhealthy drinks.
