Sugar-sweetened Beverages Can Lead to Diabetes, Obesity and Heart Disease

(Mirror Daily, United States) – We all know that drinking the sugar-sweetened beverages that are now on the market does nothing but harm to our health. But what exactly is the effect of drinking energy drinks, soda, and coffee drinks on the regular?

According to a recent study on fructose published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, sweeteners such as high-fructose corn are terrible for you – so much so that even one or two servings of sugary drinks per day can lead to excessive weight gain on the long term, as well as diabetes and heart disease.

Study author Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, explained in a press release that the results of the research only underline the urgent need to come up with new public health strategies that would reduce the consumer’s intake of these drinks.

What happens is that gaining weight is caused by the fact that sugar-sweetened drinks don’t contain filling calories, which means that people don’t feel satiated and keep on eating the regular amount of food at subsequent meals.

Hu’s team analyzed data from previous studies and the results showed that it’s enough to limit one’s daily servings of a sugary beverage to 1 or 2, and still have their risk of developing type 2 diabetes increase by 26 percent. Same amount also increases the risk of stroke by 16 percent and the chances to go through a heart attack by 35 percent.

Fructose rarely enters the body by itself. Sugar-sweetened beverages are usually the carriers, paving the way for fructose-containing sugars – such as high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and sucrose. Fruits and vegetables also contain fructose, but consuming them in healthy quantities does not increase risk of disease.

However, when it comes to manufactured fructose, the problem is that it’s being added to a wide range of products that people consume on the regular, such as soda and bread. The end result is the health problem the U.S. is dealing with now: obesity.

Breaking down fructose once it was ingested is part of the problem. Low quantities of fructose are quickly metabolized by the liver, but when there is a sugar overload, the liver cannot process it anymore, so it gets converted into fat.

Americans began eating unhealthy levels of HFCS ever since 1970, when manufacturers started using it over sugar, which was more expensive. The dramatic growth that was experienced over the next two decades led to today’s statistics: almost half of the entire U.S. population drinks sugar-sweetened beverages on the regular.
Image Source: CTV News

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Tara Hamilton

Tara has graduated from the University of Oregon, with bachelors degree in Spanish Literature in 2010. She lived in Miami for one year and travelled extensively before settling down in El Paso.