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Medicine Science

Drinking a Can of Sugary Soda Every Day Can Boost a Person's Risk For Prediabetes, Study Finds (upi.com) 143

An anonymous reader quotes a report from UPI: Drinking a can of sugary soda every day can dramatically heighten a person's risk of developing prediabetes, a "warning sign" condition that precedes full-blown type 2 diabetes, a new study reports. A person who drinks a daily can of sugar-sweetened beverage has a 46 percent increased risk of developing prediabetes, said senior researcher Nicola McKeown, a scientist with the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. For this study, McKeown and her colleagues analyzed 14 years of data on nearly 1,700 middle-aged adults. The information was obtained from the Framingham Heart Study, a federally funded program that has monitored multiple generations for lifestyle and clinical characteristics that contribute to heart disease. Participants did not have diabetes or prediabetes when they entered the study. They self-reported their consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and diet sodas. The research team found those who drank the highest amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages -- six 12-ounce servings a week, on average -- had a 46 percent higher risk of prediabetes, if researchers didn't weigh other factors. Authors of the new study noted that prediabetes risk did decline when they included factors such as other dietary sources of sugar and how much body fat a person had. But it didn't fall much. The increased risk associated with sugary drinks still amounted to about 27 percent, McKeown said. Because the study was observational, it does not establish a direct cause-and-effect link between sugary drinks and prediabetes, McKeown said.
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Drinking a Can of Sugary Soda Every Day Can Boost a Person's Risk For Prediabetes, Study Finds

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  • Smoking causes emphysema, lung cancer, and may complicate pregnancies.
    • Smoking causes emphysema, lung cancer, and may complicate pregnancies.

      Big deal. Breathing causes death -- 100% of all dead people were habitual breathers.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
        Wrong. 100% of all dead people are habitual NON breathers. I posit that NOT breathing causes death. Of course there are heretics who argue that death is caused by failures of one or more vital organ systems and that non breathing is merely a symptom of death but correlation != causation!
  • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @08:30PM (#53261981)

    Show a standard sugar packet to someone drinking a soda, and ask them how many packets would it take to equal the sugar in their soda. They will usually guess one or two. It is actually about twelve.

    • getting more value in their canned tap water than they thought
    • by cfalcon ( 779563 )

      The big reason for this is usually that something in the soda that is there for flavor, also is bitter. So sugar is added until it is sweet. The net effect usually is, there's way too much sugar for its level of sweetness.

      I use soda exclusively as a mixer for alcohol. I probably average about two cans a week- it's been weeks since I had any, but I can recall a week where I had whiskey-cokes several times, so that's my guess.

      • I use soda exclusively as a mixer for alcohol. I probably average about two cans a week- it's been weeks since I had any, but I can recall a week where I had whiskey-cokes several times, so that's my guess.

        I've taken to Zevia root beer, which IMO is their only really good flavor. Ironically, it's ginger-based, but their ginger beer is kind of crap. Great mixer with various whiskeys or similar.

        • Coke tried a variant for a while that used stevia and (IIRC) sucrose. It tasted terrible, almost as bad as diet Coke. Stevia has its uses, but doesn't work as a universal replacement for sugar.
          • Stevia has its uses, but doesn't work as a universal replacement for sugar.

            I find it works best when it's mixed with erythitol or howtfever you spell that, I've been using it for months and still can't manage it reliably. Someone sells a product based on this idea as well, which I think is pretty good. Anyway, the root beer is the only flavor of Zevia which doesn't taste like a leaf.

      • by arth1 ( 260657 )

        The big reason for this is usually that something in the soda that is there for flavor, also is bitter. So sugar is added until it is sweet.

        Apart from bitter lemon, tonic water, birch beer and energy drinks containing taurine, i can't say I am familiar with any bitter sodas. Lots of them are highly acidic, but not bitter, which is a very distinct flavor from acidic.

        Coca-Cola used to be bitter before it was carbonated and sugared, and actually contained coca extract, but that's a long time ago. Perhaps that's what you're thinking of?

        • Apart from bitter lemon, tonic water, birch beer and energy drinks containing taurine, i can't say I am familiar with any bitter sodas. Lots of them are highly acidic, but not bitter, which is a very distinct flavor from acidic.

          Coca-Cola used to be bitter before it was carbonated and sugared, and actually contained coca extract, but that's a long time ago. Perhaps that's what you're thinking of?

          Caffeine [wikipedia.org] is quite bitter in raw form. Any soda that it is added to needs extra sugar to overcome the bitterness imparted by the caffeine.

          Yaz

          • by arth1 ( 260657 )

            Caffeine [wikipedia.org] is quite bitter in raw form. Any soda that it is added to needs extra sugar to overcome the bitterness imparted by the caffeine.

            The tiny amounts of caffeine aren't going to make the entire drink bitter. We drink unsweetened iced coffee without feeling that it's bitter (unless the cheap bastards have used bitter or overroasted beans).

            • It's not that it makes the beverage bitter -- it's that it makes it less sweet. The manufacturers add extra sugar to overcome the reduced sweetness in order to get the taste profile back to where they want it to be.

              Yaz

  • by SensitiveMale ( 155605 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @08:37PM (#53262017)

    Imagine that. Drinking pure sugar can raise the risk of pre-diabetes.

    • by arth1 ( 260657 )

      Imagine that. Drinking pure sugar can raise the risk of pre-diabetes.

      That's not what the study says. It only points out a correlation for a subset of the population.
      There may well be an external cause for both a craving for sugar and a disposition for pre-diabetes. Or the causation might even go the other way, where craving for sugar is one of the first symptoms.
      Jumping to conclusions is always bad, and especially when it seems so obvious.

  • Like my Mtn Dew or Dr Pepper after lunch, how bad can it be?

    I've got this 32 oz coffee mug I carry around with me, everyone who knows me knows it. Up until 11 it's full of coffee, after 11 it's full of water. But I gotta say, I always have an after lunch meeting of some sort or another and they always have either the dew or the doc, doc takes precedence.
  • I would call a 40% fall fairly significant... Of course I only had one semester of statistics in college - so what do I know about the subject
    • by Jzanu ( 668651 )
      Big issue with that exaggerated figure is the "if researchers didn't weigh other factors" part because it invalidates the entire claim. Read your old statistics book again.
  • the free rein of food companies over the last 50 years has lead to a very dire situation where it's literally becoming a scenario of the survival of the fittest. the population is going to decimated because of the amount of sugar (especially fructose) being shoved into every food and plenty of them will die before having offspring. regardless of who's to blame, Darwin always wins.

  • by J053 ( 673094 ) <J053@shan[ ]-la.cx ['gri' in gap]> on Thursday November 10, 2016 @09:07PM (#53262121) Homepage Journal

    In other news, water is wet.

  • My odds of getting pre-diabetes is extremely low. Add 46% and it becomes extremely low.
    • I drink on the average, 2 cans of cola per day and have done so for decades. My blood sugar is low and my weight is normal. My lipid panel is normal and I've actually lost 10 pounds in the last couple of months.

      I feel great. I cycle, hike and snow ski among other things (but not a lot).

      I simply limit my food intake and minimize fats.

      • Some people don't have to worry about this. Everyone knows someone who eats lots of pizza, drinks full-sugar sodas, and is rail-thin. This is for those of us who lack such metabolisms.

        I know exactly how much exercise is required to allow me to eat anything I want and stay at an appropriate weight: high school football. About 14 hours a week of running around with pads, helmet, etc., plus four hours a week of weights. I don't have an extra 18 hours a week as an adult.
      • A few months ago I read an article where a 100 year old women claimed that the secret to longevity was smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day. Just because you can consume 80+ grams of sugar a day without negative consequences doesn't mean that everyone can. In fact research has pretty much conclusively shown that for most people smoking and excessive sugar intake is quite detrimental to health and longevity
  • This is obvious: carbs have to go somewhere. Sport helps burning them in muscles, but for the sedentary, the only options for carbs in excess are making fat, or developing diabetes (or both!)
  • by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @10:09PM (#53262391) Journal

    Will that also cause pre-die-a-beetus?

  • This story brought to you by those that want to Tax sugar water (soda drinks) so that we won't drink it as much so we will all be healthy, so future health costs will be cheaper...
  • by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @10:20PM (#53262445)

    Most of us will die in the nuclear war and its aftermath

    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      No. Hillary lost. Nuclear war cancelled.
      • Yes, we all know that Vladimir won't have to rattle sabres any longer to get what he wants.

        • The problem is that we don't know what Vladimir wants, or if he gets what he wants, will he want more?

          Does he just want a warm water port? Does he want all the land that used to be the USSR? Does he want totalitarianism? Does he want the whole world?

  • A risk is bad and
    bad is negative, but
    two negatives equals a positive,
    so all I need to do is to drink 'Two' Cans of Sugary Soda Every Day, right?

    • Two cans in a row are summed, so they remain a negative. To get a positive, they must be at right angles so that they are multiplied. Drink one standing, and the other lying down.
  • Every living person except people with diabetes is in a Pre-Diabetic condition. Every living person is in a Pre-Death condition. We really should stop this bullshit with our language. We really should TRY to be honest with other people and ourselves.
  • What about pre-pre-diabetes? or pre-pre-pre-diabetes? Being born can get you that one.

  • by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Friday November 11, 2016 @12:30AM (#53263069)

    Beer is good for you maybe trump can lower the drinking age. So teens drink less pop.

  • Um, welcome to the '90s. Seriously, Slashdot?
  • When you spend all your time trying to live forever, you tend to forget to live life.
  • by guacamole ( 24270 ) on Friday November 11, 2016 @06:15AM (#53264003)

    .. causes Christmas to arrive.

  • Come on. This is supposed to be a nerds' site. You should know that this kind of studies are useless because there is no way to prove causation. Perhaps people who like soda are more prone to diabetes in the first place. Perhaps (oh! sudden insight) they don't only drink soda but also overeat and don't move their sorry asses, like, ever.

    When somebody makes a study of a thousand vegetarians that run 5K every day, and take half and force them to drink a glass of soda every day for ten years, and then compare

    • You should know that this kind of studies are useless because there is no way to prove causation.

      The thing is, if you're being an idiot about it (as many of the correlation != causation parroters here do) you can never prove causation. The reason being is you have to prove the non-existence of some underlying casuative effect. And it is of course impossible to prove a negative.

      I mean how do you know that applying a force to an object causes it to move? I claim that it doesn't. You see it's actually unicorns

  • That's exactly why I drink more coffee now than soda, I normally use a tablespoon of sugar for a 12 oz cup of coffee, compare that to a coke or pepsi and you've cut your sugar consumption by 3/4.

  • A soda a day keeps the insulin far, far away.
  • What a surprise that drinking lots of something that is more than 10% made from sugar can contribute towards pre-diabetes shocker.
  • No, really? Overloading your system with sugar is bad for you??? Who knew???

    Seriously, watch the documentary "Sugar Coated" on Netflix. Excellent and sobering.

  • I'm drinking just herb, green and black tea, and wine and beer. What's a "sugary soda"? Only idiots drink that, really.

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