Causality in the field of nutrition is often very difficult to prove. Because a person’s diet changes on a daily basis, accusing one specific food to be the cause of a disease must only be done in light of hard-core evidence.
Over the recent years, sugar snatched the spotlight from fats, and it is now the center of hot debate among health experts. Even though a hefty amount of evidence supports (notice that I am not using the word prove) the deleterious effect of added sugars in the obesity epidemic and the development of chronic diseases like diabetes, researchers remain reluctantly to use the word cause due to the influence of other dietary and lifestyle factors.
Without a doubt, the major food source of added sugars are derived from sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs), and many health experts believe that they play a huge role in the booming rate of obesity and diabetes. It is estimated that over half of the U.S. population consume SSBs, with a mean consumption of 284 g/day.
“Our findings also imply that consumption of artificially sweetened beverages or fruit juice is not likely to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and, thus, not suitable as a healthy option,” reported the authors. “Under an assumption of causality, consumption of sugar sweetened beverages may be linked to 4–13% of type 2 diabetes incidence in the United States […] over 10 years, 2010-2020.”
A republished systematic review and meta-analysis published in the British Medical Journal aimed to evaluate the incidence of type 2 diabetes caused by SSBs, supposing that they do. The authors found an 18% increase in the incidence of type 2 diabetes for every serving of SSBs. When taking into account adiposity, the incidence decreases to 13%. The evidence for fruit juice and artificially sweetened beverages is less clear.
By assuming that SSBs do cause type 2 diabetes, their findings would translate into two million cases of type 2 diabetes caused by SSBs over a period of ten years.
Moral of the story: Cut back on SSBs, substitute artificially sweetened beverages with healthier options (e.g. water, milk, unsweetened tea and coffee), limit 100% fruit juice to ½ cup per day, and opt for whole fruits.
