Sugary Drinks to Blame for 184,000 Deaths Worldwide Each Year

Amy Taylor July 07, 2015

The increasing consumption of sugary drinks has led to some 184,000 deaths worldwide, new research found. It highlights the impact of sugary diet on public health, which includes an increased risk of major health diseases: cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer.

The findings were based on 62 national dietary surveys, which included more than 600,000 people in 51 countries surveyed between 1980 and 2010. The researchers estimate that worldwide, regular consumption of sweetened drinks cause 133,000 deaths from diabetes, 45,000 from cardiovascular disease, and 6,450 from cancers.

The percentage of death linked to sugar consumption varied widely by age and country, from less than 1 per cent among Japanese people older than 65, to 30 per cent in Mexicans younger than 45. In the United States, about 25,000 deaths a year are caused by sweetened drinks.

To confirm the disease-specific causes of death, researchers used the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors 2010, an international analysis that is periodically updated.

“There’s no need to drink these beverages,” Dr Dariush Mozaffarian, senior author of the study and dean of the School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts. “They’re causing tens of thousands of deaths, and we should eliminate them from the food supply.”

Their study was published online in the journal Circulation.

In previous studies, it was shown that sugary drink consumption is a major contributor to obesity epidemic. In one ground-breaking study which involved people with a genetic predisposition for obesity, it was found that those who drank sugary drinks were more likely to be obese than those who did not. Sugary drinks can also cause insulin resistance – a key feature of metabolic syndrome which is a stepping stone towards heart disease and diabetes. Such beverages contain no nutrient. As in zero. They add nothing to the diet except excessive amounts of added sugar and unnecessary calories.

Source of this article: Sugary Drinks Take a Deathly Toll