A new study confirms the hazards of sugary drinks noting that adults who routinely consume one soft drink or other sweetened beverages a day were 46 percent more likely to develop elevated blood sugar levels than people who rarely or never drink such beverages.
Numerous studies linking sugary sodas and diabetes point to a potential connection that suggests the relationship may be explained, in part, by soda drinkers being overweight or obese. However, those statistics are thrown out the window when substituting sugary soft drinks with their diet versions.
A new study confirms the hazards of sugary drinks noting that adults who routinely consume one soft drink or other sweetened beverages a day were 46 percent more likely to develop elevated blood sugar levels than people who rarely or never drink such beverages.
Nicola McKeown, a nutrition researcher at Tuft University in Boston says there should be an emphasis placed on substituting sugar-sweetened beverages with water, unsweetened teas, or coffee.
“For daily consumers of sugary drinks, kicking the habit may be a difficult challenge, and incorporating an occasional diet soda, while increasing fluids from other sources, may be the best strategy to ultimately remove sugar-sweetened beverages from the diet.”
Diabetes is a global epidemic with with more than 10 percent of the adults in the world suffering from the disease.
In the current 14 year study, researchers examined data collected on 1,685 middle-aged adults who completed questionnaires detailing what they ate and drank over the 14 years.
None of the participants had diabetes or were pre-diabetic at the start of the study.
People who drank the most sweetened beverages – around six 12-ounce serving a week – had a higher risk of developing elevated blood sugar levels than other participants after adjusting for factors such as age, gender and weight, researchers report in the Journal of Nutrition.
Higher consumption of such sugar-sweetened beverages was also associated with insulin resistance.
But the good news is that diet sodas were not associated with elevated blood sugar or insulin resistance.
Dr. Robert Cohen, a researcher at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine who wasn’t involved in the study said that he wouldn’t necessarily seek out diet drinks but the choice of non-calorie containing diet drinks is not associated with further insulin resistance or pre-diabetes in the way that calorie containing drinks are.
