Drinking pop tied to higher diabetes risk in women
CHICAGO - Sugary drinks may be partly to blame for increased rates of type 2 diabetes and weight gain in women, a new study suggests.
People with type 2 diabetes do not produce enough insulin, or their bodies become resistant to it. Obesity is strongly linked to the condition.
The extra calories from pop may explain part of the increased risk for diabetes, researchers say.
They noted rates of diabetes are rising as consumption of sweetened drinks like pop and fruit juice has increased.
The team from Boston studied data from more than 91,000 female nurses, looking for a relationship between frequent consumption of pop and diabetes.
All of the women were free of diabetes when the study began in 1991. The researchers tracked participants’ weights and dietary information every four years until 1999.
Matthias Schulze, now at the German Institute of Human Nutrition, and his colleagues at Harvard University identified 741 cases of type 2 diabetes.
The team found women who consumed one or more sugary drinks a day gained almost three times as much weight as those who drank no more than one a week.
Women drinking sugary beverages were also 1.3 times as likely to develop diabetes, after adjusting for factors like weight, diet and lifestyle differences, the researchers reported in Tuesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
“In conclusion, our findings suggest that frequent consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages may be associated with larger weight gain and increased risk of type 2 diabetes, possibly by providing excessive calories and large amounts of rapidly absorbable sugars,” the researchers said.
In an editorial accompanying the study, Dr. Caroline Apovian of Boston University noted women with a higher intake of pop tended to have dietary patterns and lifestyle habits that increased their risk for obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Apovian said doctors could be alerted to unhealthy habits by asking patients about their consumption of sugary drinks. The study’s findings also lend support for calls to ban pop machines in schools, she said.
The American Beverage Association said the study’s conclusions are not scientifically sound, adding weight gain and unhealthy lifestyles lead to diabetes, rather than drinking pop itself.
Written by CBC News Online staff
It’s time we switch to water and/or pure fruit juices that do not contain added sugar.
