Sugary drinks like sodas and energy drinks are designed to be hyper-palatable, loaded with extravagant amounts of sweeteners to stimulate the pleasure centers in the brain.
However, that initial pleasure belies hidden danger. Sugar-sweetened beverages typically provide little nutritional value, and research shows that regular consumption can increase the risk of health problems such as tooth decay, obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Roughly 1.2 million new cases of cardiovascular disease and 2.2 million new cases of type 2 diabetes develop worldwide every year because people drink sugary drinks, according to a new study led by researchers at Tufts University in the US.
And while overall consumption of sugary drinks has declined recently in some developed countries, the study authors note that soft drinks and their relatives still pose a significant threat to public health in much of the world, especially in the developing countries.
“Sugar-sweetened beverages are heavily marketed and sold in low- and middle-income countries,” says senior author Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and public health scientist at Tufts University.
“These communities not only consume harmful products, but are often less equipped to deal with the long-term health consequences.”
The problem is especially acute in some countries. For example, the study links almost a third of all new diabetes cases in Mexico to sugary drinks, as well as almost half of all new diabetes cases in Colombia.
In South Africa, about 28 percent of new diabetes cases and 15 percent of new heart disease cases can be attributed to sugary drinks, the researchers report.
The study focuses on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), which the authors define as any beverage with added sugars and at least 50 kilocalories per 8-ounce serving. This includes commercial or homemade soft drinks, energy drinks, fruit drinks, punch, lemonade and agua frescas.
This definition excludes beverages such as sweetened milk, 100 percent fruit and vegetable juices and non-caloric, artificially sweetened beverages, the researchers note, although many of these can still pose health risks if consumed in excess.
The researchers obtained data on beverage intake from the Global Dietary Database, which includes 450 studies with data on SSB consumption, representing a total of 2.9 million people from 118 countries.
To shed light on the links between SSBs and disease, they included this data and rates of cardiovascular and metabolic disease in a comparative risk assessment, based on previous research on the physiological effects of sugary drinks.
Globally, this meant that SSBs were a contributing factor in 1.2 million new cases of heart disease per year, as well as 2.2 million new cases of type 2 diabetes.
The study also suggests that SSBs cause approximately 80,000 deaths from type 2 diabetes and 258,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease each year.
That’s a devastating toll, but highlighting the role of sugary drinks like these can help turn the tide, explains first author and food scientist Laura Lara-Castor, formerly a Ph.D. student at Tufts and now at the University of Washington.
“We need urgent, evidence-based interventions to curb the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages worldwide, before even more lives are shortened by their effects on diabetes and heart disease,” says Lara-Castor.
Our bodies quickly digest sugary drinks, the researchers note, raising our blood sugar levels while providing only meager nutritional value at best.
Drinking too many of these beverages too often can lead to weight gain and insulin resistance, they note, as well as several metabolic problems linked to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Public awareness of these risks may be growing, but not quickly or universally enough, the researchers say.
“Much more needs to be done, especially in countries in Latin America and Africa where consumption is high and health consequences are severe,” says Mozaffarian. “As a species, we need to address the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.”
The research was published in Naturopathy.