Do Soft Drinks Cause Diabetes?

About 17 million people in the United States have diabetes mellitus. Recent media articles have noted that the increase in this illness has paralleled the increase in obesity in the population. In turn, obesity has increased in parallel with a 60% increase in soft drink consumption by adults, and more than a factor of two in children. There has been immense pressure from the sugar lobby not to link sugar consumption in any form, with any type of illness. Lacking hard evidence, there was little ground for protesting and overturning the USDA's new food guide that ignores possible health effects of sugar consumption. However, a new article in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), v 292, p 927 (2004) presents evidence that indeed the consumption of sugar loaded soft drinks on a daily basis is linked to diabetes mellitus.

The reported study involved 91,000 women who were tracked for a period of about 8 years. At the beginning of the study in 1991, these women were free diabetes and other major chronic illnesses, and had ages between 26 and 46. 741 cases of type 2 diabetes were identified during the followup period. After adjustment for other factors that could impact diabetes ("confounding factors"), the study finds that women consuming one or more sugar-sweetened soft drinks, or fruit punch, have an increased risk ratio for type 2 diabetes of approximately a factor of 2 (1.4 to 2.3 approximate Margin of Error), compared to women who have one or less drink per month.

This sounds pretty serious; let's look at the absolute risk on the next page.

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