Sugary Drinks Are Fueling Millions of Diabetes and Heart Disease Cases Worldwide

Tufts University researchers say carbonated and energy drinks loaded with sweeteners light up the brain’s pleasure centers, which is why they taste so good.

But that pleasure has a hidden cost. It’s not just that these products usually have little nutritional value; regular consumption carries serious health risks, including cavities, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.

What Did the Researchers Discover?

The researchers gathered data on beverage consumption from the Global Nutrition Database, which includes results from 450 surveys involving 2.9 million people across 118 countries, as reported by Science Alert.

The team’s analysis estimates that about 1.2 million new cases of cardiovascular disease and 2.2 million cases of type 2 diabetes each year worldwide are directly linked to the consumption of sugary drinks.

The study also found that these beverages contribute to roughly 80,000 deaths from type 2 diabetes and 258,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease globally each year.

The study found that overall consumption of sugary drinks has recently declined in developed countries. However, these drinks still present a major public health threat in low- and middle-income countries.

“Sugar-sweetened beverages are actively marketed and sold in low- and middle-income countries. The populations there not only consume these harmful products but are often less equipped to deal with the long-term health consequences,” remarked cardiologist Dariush Mozaffarian, the senior author of the study. Take South Africa, for example, where sugary drinks account for about 28 percent of new diabetes cases and 15 percent of heart disease cases each year.

Co-author and dietitian Laura Lara-Castor emphasized, “We need urgent, data-driven measures to curb the consumption of sugary drinks worldwide before diabetes and heart disease caused by them take even more lives.”

The researchers also found that frequent consumption of sweetened beverages leads to weight gain and metabolic problems.

The study was published in the journal Nature Medicine.