Sugary beverages like sodas and energy drinks are designed to be hyper-palatable, laden with extravagant amounts of sweeteners to stimulate pleasure centers in the brain.
That initial enjoyment belies hidden danger, though. Sugar-sweetened drinks typically offer scant nutritional value, and research shows habitual consumption can raise the risk of health problems such as tooth decay, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.
In fact, according to a new study led by researchers from Tufts University in the US, roughly 1.2 million new cases of cardiovascular disease and 2.2 million new cases of type 2 diabetes develop worldwide each year due to people drinking sugar-sweetened beverages.
And while overall consumption of sugary drinks has declined recently in some developed nations, the study’s authors note, sodas and their kin remain a significant threat to public health across much of the world, particularly in developing countries.
“Sugar-sweetened beverages are heavily marketed and sold in low- and middle-income nations,” says senior author Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and public health scientist at Tufts University.
“Not only are these communities consuming harmful products, but they are also often less well equipped to deal with the long-term health consequences.”
The problem is especially dire in some countries. The study links nearly one-third of all new diabetes cases in Mexico to sugary drinks, for example, as well as nearly 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 drink 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 drinks like sweetened milk, 100 percent fruit and vegetable juices, and noncaloric artificially sweetened drinks, the researchers note, although many of those may still pose health risks if consumed in excess.
The researchers obtained beverage intake data from the Global Dietary Database, including 450 surveys with data on SSB consumption, representing a total of 2.9 million people from 118 countries.
To shed light on links between SSBs and illness, they incorporated these data and cardiometabolic disease rates into a comparative risk assessment, informed by previous research on physiological effects of sugary drinks.
Globally, this implicated SSBs as a contributing factor in 1.2 million new cases of heart disease each year as well as 2.2 million new cases of type 2 diabetes.
The study also suggests SSBs cause roughly 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 this can help turn the tide, explains first author and nutritional 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 consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages globally, before even more lives are shortened by their effects on diabetes and heart disease,” Lara-Castor says.
Our bodies digest sugary drinks quickly, the researchers note, boosting our blood sugar levels while providing only meager nutritional value at best.
Drinking too many of these drinks too often can lead to weight gain and insulin resistance, they note, as well as various metabolic issues related to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Public awareness of these risks may be growing, but not quickly and universally enough, the researchers say.
“Much more needs to be done, especially in countries in Latin America and Africa where consumption is high and the health consequences severe,” Mozaffarian says. “As a species, we need to address sugar-sweetened beverage consumption.”
The study was published in Nature Medicine.
