Drink that have a high sugar content such as Coke and Pepsi kill around 200,000 people are year throughout the world.
This is according to a study that was conducted by researchers at the Tufts University.
The study was published in the journal Circulation.
Sugar consumption can put a person can an increased risk for heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
Senior author Dariush Mozaffarian has stated that many countries around the world are seeing high death rates from sugar sweetened beverages especially soda.
He feels that it should be a top priority throughout the world to cut out these sweetened beverages from the average diet.
This study was first presented to the American Heart Association Council on Epidemiology back and Prevention back in 2013.
U.S. Leads with the Highest Death Rates
This study took a look at the global impact on health that sweetened beverages have. They took at look at fruit drinks, sodas, sport drinks, energy drinks, teas, and homemade drinks. Each of these beverages had some form of sugar and at least 50 calories in it for an eight ounce serving. One hundred percent fruit juice was not included in this study because it does contain different levels of nutrients.
Researchers conducted 62 different studies. They had 611,971 participants from 51 different countries. The studies were conducted between 1980 and 2010. This allowed scientists to estimate the sugar consumption per country. They also used this with data of sugar consumption from 187 different countries.
Using this information and information from previous studies researcher determined that high sugar consumption lead to high death rates from cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. In 2010 alone sugar sweetened beverages were responsible for 6,450 deaths from cancer, 45,000 deaths from heart disease, and 133,000 deaths from diabetes.
While 76 percent of deaths from sugary beverages happened in the middle or lower income countries the U.S is in some big trouble. They can in second of deaths per capita. This means 125 million adults die from sugary beverage consumption. Mexico had 405 deaths per every million adults.
Scientists see no benefits from drinking sugary beverages. If people stopped drinking soda and other sugar sweetened drinks it could save thousands of lives every year.
Sugar is a Top killer
The British Journal of Sports Medicine had an article where scientist thought fast food companies were using Big Tobacco playbooks to distract people from seeing how unhealthily their food really is. The researchers found that for every 150 calories from sugar a person eats they are eleven times more likely to develop diabetes.
Another study showed that poor eating habits lead to more deaths then cigarette smoking, alcohol, and lack of physical activity caused combined.
According to the study by Tufts the United States has 25,000 deaths every year that are linked to sugar sweetened drinks. This is similar to the 30,000 to 40,000 people killed in car crashed each year. According to a study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety 1,600 of these deaths are the result of distracted teenagers driving.
The death rates from sweetened beverages are much higher than the threat of death from major diseases. The whooping cough killed 20 people in the United States in 2012. This was the most deathly year from this ailment since 1955. There has been one death from measles from 2003.
Before the measles vaccination around 500 people a year died from it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claim 36,000 people die every year from the flu other data contradicts this. Data from the National Vital Statistics System show that 500 people a year die from the flu.
Sources:
Pix11 | Science Daily | NaturalNews | Census.gov
