Study: The effects of long-term consumption of sugary drinks

New research from Cancer Council Victoria and the University of Melbourne has concluded that the long-term consumption of sugary soft drinks dramatically increases cancer risk, regardless of weight. This suggests that even among people of a healthy weight, drinking a sugary beverage raises the likelihood of several types of cancer. This would also imply that cancer risk is not completely driven by obesity but in unhealthy food consumption.

• Two prospective studies were used for data collection:
  – The Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study (MCCS), which recruited 41,514 men and women aged between 40 to 69 years old, between 1990 and 1994, and
  – The second wave of the same MCCS study which occurred between 2003 to 2007.
• Data from 35,593 participants who developed 3,283 incidents of obesity-related cancers were included in the main analysis.
• Participants completed a 121-item food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) at baseline, including separate questions about the number of times in the past year they had consumed a sugar-sweetened or artificially-sweetened beverage.
• Other information gathered included: waist circumference, smoking habits (if ever); leisure-time physical activity; and intake of alcoholic beverages (if ever).
• The frequent consumption of both sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened soft drinks was linked to a greater waist circumference at baseline.
• Those who favored sugar-sweetened drinks had a statistically significant risk of many types of cancer.
• Of note is the finding that there was no link between the consumption of artificially-sweetened drinks and cancer risk.

Researchers concluded that drinking sugar-sweetened beverages increases a person’s risk of developing various forms of cancer.

These results were published in Public Health Nutrition.

Find out what other toxic foods could be causing cancer at CancerCauses.news.

Journal Reference:

Hodge A, Bassett J, Milne R, English D. CONSUMPTION OF SUGAR-SWEETENED AND ARTIFICIALLY SWEETENED SOFT DRINKS AND RISK OF OBESITY-RELATED CANCERS. Public Health Nutrition. 21 February 2018; 21(9). DOI: 10.1017/S1368980017002555