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New research has shown that you may be risking your life by regularly drinking sugary sodas, energy drinks, sports drinks, fruit drinks, sweetened ice teas, and all other beverages containing 50 kilocalories or more per serving.
These beverages have been linked to the death of 184.000 adults worldwide, per year, with 25.000 of them being American citizens. Truth be told, the recorded victims weren’t exactly in perfect shape, as they were all suffering from cancer, heart disease or diabetes.
Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, however, senior author on the study and dean over at Tufts University, insists that they are the root cause of the deaths, even if indirectly. He stresses that such beverages have been known to aid in the development of medical conditions like heart disease or diabetes.
The study, conducted by experts over at Tufts University, even gives specifics – somewhere around 133.000 of the victims had diabetes, 45.000 of the victims had heart disease, and 6.450 of the victims had cancer.
The situation is grave enough that the senior author gave a statement declaring that “There are no health benefits from sugar-sweetened beverages, and the potential impact of reducing consumption is saving tens of thousands of deaths each year”.
The researchers reached their conclusions by examining data collected by 62 surveys, from 51 different countries, conducted somewhere between 1980 and 2010. The total number of individuals that the experts looked at was 611.971.
The most important thing that they found was that the percentage of deaths varied based on demographics such as age and geography. The most affect age group were young adults as they had the biggest percentage of members who developed chronic disease as a direct result of frequently consuming sugary beverages. They exceed older adults by 1 in 10 when it came to deaths related to obesity and diabetes.
The most affected region was Mexico, as the country recorded 405 adult deaths per million all within a single year. Dr. Mozaffarian and his colleagues have a theory as to why so many people die here from consuming sugary beverages. They believe that people turn to such drinks due to how hard it is for them to find safe drinking water in the area.
The American Beverage Association is skeptical of the findings, saying that the study failed to offer any definitive proof that drinking sugar-sweetened beverages can cause chronic diseases or lead to your untimely death.
The study was published on June 29, 2015, in the journal Circulation.
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