Drinking a can of sugar-laced soda a day will raise your risk of developing diabetes by 22 percent! According to a new study out today evidence suggests that just one 12-ounce serving of a sugar-sweetened beverage can significantly raise the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
What's interesting about this this is that since most of the research on the evil effects of soda has been done on people in the US, researches at the Imperial College of London set up to seek a link between soda consumption and type 2 diabetes in Europeans as well.
The British researchers used 15 years of data compiled from over 27,000 people from seven European countries. Over that 15-year period, more than 40 percent of those people developed type 2 diabetes and those who said they consumed at least one soda or similar sweet drink showed an 18 percent higher risk of developing the disease! When they took out factors such as weight and body mass index, the risk rose to 22 percent!
Coincidentally, these findings were right in line with the US studies showing a 25 percent percent increased risk of type 2 diabetes when consuming one soda per day. When the researchers looked at the diet soda drinkers in the group, they noticed something quite striking. When they factored in body weight and exercise, they healthy weight people in the group who drank diet soda were no more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than non-soda drinkers. This basically proves that you are at least 22 percent more likely to develop diabetes if you drink a can of soda each day. Scary stuff!
How can just one little soda do so much damage?
Sweetened drinks are the largest contributor to empty calories and processed sugar in both the American and European diets according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The sweeteners in these drinks along with artificial colors, flavors and phosphoric acid all have negative effects on the human body.
What about other sweet drinks like fruit juice?
Fruit juice consumption was not linked to diabetes incidence. In fact, natural drinks with sugars and flavors occurring naturally such as organic fruit juices have shown no evidence of increased risk of diabetes in otherwise healthy people.
Patrick Wolfe, a statistics expert from University College London who was not involved in the research, said the message from its results was clear.
"The bottom line is that sugary soft drinks are not good for you - they have no nutritional value and there is evidence that drinking them every day can increase your relative risk for type 2 diabetes," he said in an emailed comment.
Clearly the proven negative effects of soda should be enough to scare you into reconsidering taking a sip of the potentially lethal surgery poison drink.
