By contributing to obesity and, through that, to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, the consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks appears to claim the lives of about 25,000 American adults yearly and is linked worldwide to the deaths of 180,000 each year, new research says. Low- and middle-income countries are bearing the brunt of the death toll attributed to overconsumption of sugar-sweetened sodas, sports drinks and fruit drinks, according to an assessment published Monday in the American Heart Assn.'s journal, Circulation.
Each year, more than 3 in 4 of the world's deaths attributed to overconsumption of sugar-sweetened beverages occur in those poor and developing countries. In Mexico - a country with one of the world's highest per-capita consumption of sweetened drinks - about 24,000 adults' deaths in 2010 were attributed to overconsumption of sugar-sweetened drinks. That translated into the highest death rate of the world's 20 most populous nations: 405 deaths per million adults in one year.
Researchers collected data on deaths and disabilities from 2010 and calculated the direct effect that sugar-sweetened beverages had on public health based on dietary surveys reaching more than 600,000 people. The beverages in the study included sugar-sweetened sodas, fruit drinks, energy drinks, sweetened iced teas and homemade sugary drinks such as frescas.
The American Beverage Association dismissed the study when it was first presented to the American Heart Association as an abstract in 2013, taking issue that it had been presented without being published or peer-reviewed and calling it "more about sensationalism than science. "The researchers make a huge leap when they take beverage intake calculations from around the globe and allege that those beverages are the cause of deaths which the authors themselves acknowledge are due to chronic disease," the statement said.
If these young people continue to guzzle sugar-sweetened beverages at their current rate, said study co-author Gitanjali Singh, the consequences could be dire. Compounded by the effects of aging, this generation's high rates of sugary drink consumption may push its rates of death and disability from heart disease and diabetes even higher than those seen in the current study, said Singh, also of Friedman School.
