Sugary Soft Drinks Lead to Diabetes
March 10, 2010
Telegraph.co.uk
By Richard Alleyne
More people now drink soft, sport and fruit drinks daily, and the increase has led to thousands more diabetes and heart disease cases over the past decade, according to research presented to the American Heart Association’s annual conference.
The study estimates the increased consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks between 1990 and 2000 contributed to 130,000 new cases of diabetes, 14,000 new cases of coronary heart disease (CHD), and 50,000 additional life-years burdened by coronary heart disease in the US over the past decade.
The drinks – excluding 100 per cent fruit juice – contain between 120 to 200 calories per drink and play a major role in the rising tide of obesity.
Now researchers are calling for a health tax on soft drinks to pay for the increase costs of treating victims of coronary disease and diabetes.
Dr Litsa Lambrakos, of the University of California, said: “We can demonstrate an association between daily consumption of sugared beverages and diabetes risk. We can then translate this information into estimates of the current diabetes and cardiovascular disease that can be attributed to the rise in consumption of these drinks.”
Over the last decade, at least 6,000 excess deaths from any cause and 21,000 life-years lost can be attributed in the United States to the increase in sugar-sweetened drinks.
Health policy experts suggest curbing the consumption of sugared drinks through an excise tax of one cent per ounce of beverage, which would be expected to decrease consumption by 10 per cent.
Professor Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, senior author of the study at the University of California, said: “If such a tax could curb the consumption of these drinks, the health benefits could be dramatic.”
Dr Lambrakos said: “We want to make the general public more aware of the adverse health outcomes of consuming these drinks over time.
“We want to help support disease prevention and curb consumption of these drinks that lead to poor health outcomes and increased health care costs for the average American.”
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Sodas Linked to Pancreatic Cancer
February 9, 2010
Natural News
By Mike Adams
A 14-year study of 60,000 people in Singapore found that those who consume two or more sweetened soft drinks per week have an 87 percent higher risk of pancreatic cancer.
Published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, the study was led by Mark Pereira of the University of Minnesota who said, “The high levels of sugar in soft drinks may be increasing the level of insulin in the body, which we think contributes to pancreatic cancer cell growth.”
Nearly 38,000 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the United States each year, and over 34,000 die from the disease each year. This research points to what may be the common culprit of all those preventable deaths: Sugary soft drink consumption.
Poison in a can
NaturalNews has warned readers for years about the dangers of consuming soft drinks. The sweetener used in most beverages — high-fructose corn syrup — is linked to both diabetes and obesity. The phosphoric acid found in soft drinks is highly acidic, stripping minerals from bones and promoting osteoporosis. At the same time, soft drinks can cause kidney stones, too.
For those who consume diet sodas, the health risks may be even worse: Aspartame causes neurological side effects that include blindness, headaches and impaired cognitive function.
The beverage industry, of course, denies any links between soda consumption and negative health effects. It wants consumers to naively believe that liquid sugar, phosphoric acid and pressurized carbon dioxide are all good for you!
But experience tells us otherwise: Look at the people you know who consume the most soft drinks and ask yourself this simple question: Are they the healthiest people I know? Probably not.
Most likely, if they’ve been drinking sodas for many years, they’re suffering from obesity, diabetes, kidney stones and perhaps even pancreatic cancer.
Click here for the full report.
Man Drinks ‘Glass Of Fat’ In NYC Anti-Soda Video
December 15, 2009
CBS News
By Scoot Rapoport
There’s a controversial new video ad on the Internet aimed at curbing people’s cravings for sugary soft drinks.
The message has been presented in perhaps the most “tasteless” way possible.
It’s the latest skinny on those high-calorie, sugary sweet soft drinks.
“That’s nasty. That’s horrible,” one woman told CBS 2 HD on Monday night.
It’s a 30-second video released Monday showing globs of fat being gulped from a soft drink can.
“I don’t want any soda again,” said Patsy Callymore of Brooklyn.
It’s a graphic depiction from the New York City Department of Health of the potential effects of over consuming sugary beverages.
The Health Department says over the course of a year drinking one non-diet soda a day can make you 10 pounds heavier.
“We wanted to call attention to this problem of people drinking too many sugar sweetened beverages and the risk of obesity that’s associated with that,” said the Health Department’s Cathy Nonas.
CBS 2 HD showed the video to stunned soda drinkers in Times Square.
“I drink soda and I ain’t drinkin’ it anymore,” said Brenda Sinclair.
The video is part of the Health Department’s anti-obesity campaign, targeting sugary drinks like soda, sports drinks and energy drinks, among others.
But in response the American Beverage Association called the campaign irresponsible, saying in a statement: “If the goal is to reduce obesity among New Yorkers, then this public education campaign should be based in fact, not simply sensationalized video that inaccurately portrays our industry’s products, products that are fat-free.”
In the meantime, the Health Department is urging people to reach for alternative beverages like seltzer or plain old NYC tap water.
According to a Health Department survey, more than 2 million New Yorkers drink at least one sugar sweetened beverage each day, adding as much as 250 empty calories to their diets.
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Doctors’ Deal With Coke Creates Uproar
November 9, 2009
Associated Press
By Lindsey Tanner
Advice about soft drinks and health from one of the nation’s largest doctors groups will soon be brought to you by Coke.
The American Academy of Family Physicians has prompted outcry and lost members over its new six-figure alliance with the Coca-Cola Co. The deal will fund educational materials about soft drinks for the academy’s consumer health and wellness Web site, http://www.FamilyDoctor.org.
Academy CEO Dr. Douglas Henley said Wednesday that the deal won’t influence the group’s public health messages, and that the company will have no control over editorial content. He said the new online information will include research linking soft drinks with obesity and will focus on sugar-free alternatives.
But critics say the Coke deal will water down the advice.
“Coca-Cola, like other sodas, causes enormous suffering and premature death by increasing the risks of obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, gout, and cavities,” Harvard University nutrition expert Dr. Walter Willett said in an e-mail.
He said the academy “should be a loud critic of these products and practices, but by signing with Coke their voice has almost surely been muzzled.”
Dr. Henry Blackburn, a University of Minnesota public health specialist, said the deal “will inevitably have a chilling effect on the focus of their message in regards to sweet drinks.”
Coca-Cola spokeswoman Diana Garza Ciarlante said that kind of criticism “misses the point of the partnership which is to provide education based on sound science.”
Dr. William Walker, public health officer for Contra Costa County near San Francisco, likened the alliance with ads decades ago in which physicians said mild cigarettes are safe,
Walker has been a member of the academy for 25 years but quit last week. He said 20 other doctors who work with his local medical practice also quit because of the Coke deal.
In an announcement last month, the academy, based in suburban Kansas City, Kan., said the new Coca-Cola-funded educational material will be posted online in January.
The idea is “to develop educational materials to help consumers make informed decisions so they can include the products they love in a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle,” the academy’s president-elect, Dr. Lori Heim, said at the time.
The American Academy of Pediatrics received similar criticism seven years ago when it allowed an infant formula maker’s logo to appear on copies of that group’s breast-feeding guide.
And the American Medical Association faced harsh reaction more than a decade ago with a plan to endorse Sunbeam appliances without testing them. Criticism forced the AMA to abandon that deal.
The Coke deal is not the only corporate alliance for the family physicians group. In 2005 it received funding from McDonalds for a fitness program. And its consumer Web site includes advertising for a variety of products, including deli meats and air freshener.
Henley said the Coke deal is worth six figures but he and a Coca-Cola spokeswoman declined to elaborate.
In a protest letter to Henley, 22 health specialists and activists questioned the safety of artificial sweeteners and urged the academy to abandon the deal and speak out against sugary drinks “in the strongest language.”
Henley said the academy regrets the resignations and hopes other members will not “rush to judgment” before seeing the new content.
Coca-Cola is among several corporate contributors to the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation, a separate philanthropic group. These contributors include many drug companies, McDonalds, PepsiCo and a beef industry group. Henley said the academy is in talks with other foundation contributors to fund other materials for the group, but he declined to say which ones.
Click here for the full report.
Choose Natural Sugars When You Have a Sweet Tooth
September 23, 2009
Natural News
By Sheryl Walters
The word is out about the dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup. This sticky sweet substance shows up in nearly all processed foods and headlines in soft drinks. Studies have linked HFCS to obesity. Caution should be practiced though as sugar in general has gotten a bad rep in the past years. Diets like Atkins and South Beach shun all sugar, natural or not, and have led everyone to question what sugars they eat and where they come from. In a world of myriad choices on how to sweeten your foods, what are the benefits or options of good sweet things out there?
Whole food that happens to be sweet is the best bet, namely fruits and vegetables. These contain fructose. By itself, fructose is not a good option, though studies once thought that it was helpful for diabetics, it actually leads to an increased risk of weight gain. Whole fruits have fiber, vitamins and minerals which balance out the naturally occurring sugars with their beneficial qualities. This is why it is essential to eat the whole fruit to keep blood sugars even.
Fruit has been said to be nature’s candy, though that does not always satisfy our sweet tooth. Reaching for artificial sweeteners might be your calorie free answer, but aspartame and saccharin are dangerous chemicals that the FDA link to 75% of adverse food additive reactions.
Real sugar can have its place in a balanced diet; though, take the time to find whole natural sources of sugar. Cleaner options include honey, sourced locally and organic if possible. Raw honey in particular has made its way onto the health market, since none of the nutrients which make honey a healing food have been destroyed.
Maple syrup can be experimented with to sweeten desserts. Agave, a honey like sweet syrup, is currently a hot trend since it doesn’t cause high spikes in blood sugar. Sucanat, Raw Sugar and Turbinado are less refined versions of real sugar that can be used in coffee, tea, baking and cooking; but what are these? Found in health food stores, Sucanat is a form of the sugar plant where the sugar and the existing molasses are kept together and never separated (brown sugar is when the molasses is taken out and added back in, creating a highly processed sugar.) Turbinado is made from the first pressing of the sugar cane plant, resulting in larger crystals and a truer molasses type flavor. Date sugar is made from dates and not refined like cane sugar.
Though calories for these sugars are similar to refined white sugar, they are less processed, offer some minor benefits and act more with your body more than against it. To stay sweet the right way, just make sure the amount of sugar in your diet does not account for more than 10% of your daily calories.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
Sweet Surrender: Sugar Curbs Urged
August 25, 2009
Wall Street Journal
By Ron Winslow and Shirley S. Wang
The American Heart Association is taking aim at the nation’s sweet tooth, urging consumers to significantly cut back on the amount of sugar they get from such foods as soft drinks, cookies and ice cream.
In a scientific statement issued Monday, the organization says most women should limit their sugar intake to 100 calories, or about six teaspoons, a day; for men, the recommendation is 150 calories, or nine teaspoons.
The recommendations are likely to prove challenging for many consumers to meet. Just one 12-ounce can of cola has about 130 calories, or eight teaspoons of sugar.
Data gathered during a national nutrition survey between 2001 and 2004 suggest that Americans consume on average 355 calories, or more than 22 teaspoons, of sugar a day.
“We’re trying to make reasonable recommendations around the amount of sugar in a diet that enables people to achieve or maintain a healthy weight,” said Rachel Johnson, associate provost and professor of nutrition at the University of Vermont in Burlington and lead author of the statement.
As the heart association’s statement acknowledges, the science directly linking added sugar consumption to obesity is inconsistent. This in part reflects, the impact of such things as genetics, physical activity and diet have on weight.
The heart association has encouraged consumers to moderate sugar consumption, but the new statement is the first time it has suggested specific limits. The recommendations apply only to what are known as added sugars—those that are added to foods during manufacturing, or by consumers. They don’t include sugar that occurs naturally in fruits, vegetables, dairy products and other foods.
Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University who wasn’t involved with the document, said it was a significant departure from previous recommendations, in part because “nobody has ever said it quite so forcefully.”
The statement heightens the battle against foods that many public-health officials say contribute to the higher risk of such problems as diabetes and cardiovascular disease among the nation’s overweight and obese consumers. A recent unrelated study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the medical costs associated with treating obesity-related conditions may have reached $147 billion last year, up from $74 billion a decade ago.
Major Sources
The chief sources of added sugar in the diet include soft drinks, candy, desserts such as cakes and cookies, fruit drinks and sweetened dairy products, including ice cream and yogurt, the statement says. Sugar in alcoholic beverages also counts as added sugar, Dr. Johnson said.
Added sugars “offer no nutritional value other than calories to the diet,” Dr. Johnson said. “The majority of Americans could reduce their risk of heart disease by achieving healthy weight and the evidence is fairly clear that reducing the amount of sugars can help with that.”
While many studies associate increased consumption of soft drinks with higher calorie intake, weight gain and obesity, others have failed to support the connection. Similarly, research investigating added sugar’s impact on blood pressure, heightened inflammation and on changes in blood fats called triglycerides is inconclusive. And there are no studies linking the recommended limits to preventing weight gain or promoting weight loss.
Instead, Dr. Johnson and her colleagues on the heart association’s nutrition committee based the suggestions on the concept of discretionary calories that are part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s dietary guidelines called Mypyramid. Discretionary calories are those allotted to a person beyond what are necessary to consume nutrients essential to a healthy diet while still maintaining a proper weight.
Under the Mypyramid guidelines, people on a 2,000-calorie-per-day diet have 267 discretionary calories. Active young people on a 3,000-calorie-a-day-diet have 512 discretionary calories.
Dr. Johnson said the committee decided that allocating half of the discretionary calories for added sugar was a proper course. More than that risks displacing necessary nutrients with calories from added sugar, she said.
For a moderately active middle-aged woman on a 1,800 calorie-a-day diet, the recommendations translate to about 100 calories for added sugar. For a sedentary middle-aged man consuming 2,200 calories a day, the allotment is about 150 calories.
Dr. Johnson said the statement doesn’t tell people to eliminate sugar from their diets. She does recommend using the allotment to make healthier foods more tasty, such as adding sugar to whole-grain cereal, instead of using it on candy. People who get regular exercise, she said, can consume higher quantities of added sugar.
William Dietz, director of the division of nutrition, physical activity and obesity at the CDC, said the guidelines are reasonable, but he said it may be difficult for the public to understand the recommendation in terms of grams of sugar intake.
‘Sugar Burden’
Instead, “I think it’s easier to talk to people about what types of foods are likely to contribute to the sugar burden,” with sugar-sweetened beverages like soft drinks and fruit juices at the top of the list, he said.
Consuming added sugar in drinks is particularly problematic, he said, because it doesn’t make you feel as full as when you eat solid food.
Quillian Haralson, 38, of Waldorf, Md., says he would try to adhere to the recommendations and pay special attention to the sugar intake of his two children.
But, he said, it would be challenging to figure out how much added sugar is in different foods.
Mr. Haralson, a high-school teacher, said he is attentive to his three-year-old son’s sugar intake, for instance, but he said he couldn’t estimate how much the child is currently consuming.
“That’s the sad part; I can’t tell you,” he said.
Current food labels don’t list sugar content in calories or teaspoons and don’t distinguish between natural and added sugars, Dr. Johnson said.
Click here for the full report from the Wall Street Journal
