Diabetics: Stay Away From Soft Drinks!

If you like drinking soft drinks, be careful: drinking one or more cans of sugary soft drinks each day has been linked to an increased risk for diabetes later in life.
Europeans scientists have found that having just one can a day raises your risk by 20 percent, compared to someone who has one can or less a month.
This new research was carried out by scientists in the UK, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Sweden, France, and the Netherlands. The findings were published in the journal Diabetologia and mirrors previous US research.
More than 350,000 people participated in the study, which involved questions about their diet and was part of a larger European study on links between diet and cancer.
"The consumption of sugar sweetened soft drinks increases your risk of diabetes- so for every can of soft drinks that you drink per day, the risk is higher," said leader researcher Dora Romaguera from Imperial College London.
Romaguera called for better public health information on the effects of soft drinks. "Given the increase in sweet beverage consumption in Europe, clearer messages on its deleterious effect on health should be given to the population," said Romaguera and colleagues in their paper.
However, fruit juice consumption was not linked to an increased risk for diabetes later in life.
Dr. Matthew Hobbs, head of research at Diabetes UK, said the link between sugary drinks and Type 2 diabetes exists when you add in body mass index. The risk, therefore, is not due to the extra calories.
"Even so, it is not definitive evidence that sugar-sweetened soft drinks increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes, other than through their effect on body weight," Dr. Hobbs said.
"We do, though, already recommend limiting consumption of sugary foods and drinks as these are usually high in calories and so can lead to weight gain if you have too many of them. This is important for Type 2 diabetes because we know that maintaining a healthy weight is the single most important thing you can do to prevent it," Hobbs added.
Professor Patrick Wolfe from University College London, a statistic expert, said that just 4 percent of the UK population has Type 1 diabetes. "In and of themselves, sugary soft drinks are only part of the picture- they're just one of the potential risk factors for Type 2 diabetes. But since they are one we can easily eliminate- by switching to diet soft drinks or, even better, cutting them out of our diets altogether- it makes good sense to do so," said Wolfe.
Reference: Codewit World News
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