Soda kills 180, 000 people a year

Published time: March 20, 2013 18:59

Your sweet tooth could be deadly: researchers have found that 25,000 people died from drinking sugary beverages in the US in 2010 – and 180,000 have died worldwide. The data presents new evidence on the public health hazard triggered by artificial drinks.

Nearly half of all Americans, 48 percent, last year were drinking at least one glass of soda per day, Gallup reported in July. Among soda-drinkers, the average daily amount is 2.6 glasses. With such a high rate of soda consumption, Americans should be worried about new data that Harvard researchers have discovered about the danger of consuming sugary beverages.

Gitanjali Singh, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and lead author of the study, has spent five years researching the effect of sugary beverages with her Harvard colleagues. The team found that the artificial drinks were directly responsible for 133,000 deaths from diabetes, 44,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease and 6,000 deaths from cancer in 2010.

With so many Americans drinking themselves to death, the researchers have termed the dangerous habit a ‘public health hazard’. And while the cause of death is usually attributed to a specific disease, the researchers found that the high rate of consumption of sugary drinks directly caused those conditions.

"We know that sugar-sweetened beverages are linked to obesity, and that a large number of deaths are caused by obesity-related diseases. But until now, nobody had really put these pieces together," Singh said while presenting the results of the study at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting in New Orleans.

The researchers made their conclusions based on data that recorded how many sugar-sweetened beverages people drank, divided by age and sex. They then proceeded to determine how the amounts of consumed beverages affected obesity rates, diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers. Finally, the scientists calculated the mortality rates of these conditions and concluded that 180,000 deaths could be attributed to the consumption of unhealthy beverages.

The results of the study come just one week after New York City Judge Milton Tingling blocked Mayor Michael Bloomberg from implementing a city-wide ban on supersized sugary drinks. Bloomberg, angered about the rejection, said that the judge was “totally in error” and that he was “talking about lives versus profits”. The ban would have outlawed artificial beverages served in containers 16 ounces or larger. Critics have argued that Americans determined to drink large quantities of soda could simply order multiple drinks or refill them – and that the restriction would simply turn New York into a “nanny state”.

FULL STORY: http://rt.com/usa/soda-sugar-danger-research-singh-559/