Shocking annual death toll from sugary drinks
Remember that the next time you’d like to suck one down. You’re
flirting with your own mortality every time you do. This isn’t
speculation. It’s science.
According to a recently released study, scientists have finally quantified the world-wide death toll from sugary drinks. Results were published in the journal Circulation.
Every year, 184,000 adults across the globe die due to the deleterious effects of sugar-laden drinks
Such drinks include fruit juices, sweetened teas, sports drinks,
homemade sugary drinks and sugar-sweetened sodas. These impact
disabilities and death in relation to diabetes and heart disease, two
issues closely tied to mortality.
Though the study could be interpreted as fear-mongering, keep in mind
that the data was collected from over 187 countries and includes
information on over half a million individuals. The data are further
broken down to show that sugary beverages led to 133,000 deaths from
diabetes, 45,000 from cardiovascular disease and 6,450 from cancer.
As cardiologist and epidemiologist Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian of Tufts University explains, there are absolutely no benefits from drinking beverages sweetened with sugar. Simply eliminating these would save tens of thousands of lives every year.
