New Study Confirms: Sugary Drinks Kill 184,000 People Each Year

By Jake Anderson | ANTIMEDIA | June 30, 2015

According to a new study, the effects of sugary soft drinks are considerably worse than previously thought: they are directly responsible for 184,000 deaths every year. It is the first comprehensive study of the effects of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) on human health, and the results confirm what medical experts have suspected for decades.

Published in the latest volume of the American Heart Association’s Circulation journal, the research implicates sodas, sweetened iced teas, fruit drinks, and sports/energy drinks.

The study is entitled “Estimated Global, Regional, and National Disease Burdens Related to Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption in 2010,” and it affirms that most of the deaths are from complications resulting from diabetes due to the consumption of “sugar-sweetened beverages” (SSBs).

The rest of the fatalities are due to cardiovascular disease and cancer, which are linked to 45,000 and 6,450 annual deaths, respectively.

The study’s author, Dariush Mozaffarian of Tufts University in Boston, says,

“There are no health benefits from sugar-sweetened beverages, and the potential impact of reducing consumption is saving tens of thousands of deaths each year.”

Further, the report states that economic disparity plays a factor, as 76% of the people who died between the years of 1980 and 2010 as a result of consuming sugary drinks lived in low-to-middle income countries.

Mozaffarian goes on to state that the research “indicate[s] the need for population-based efforts to reduce SSB consumption throughout the world through effective health policies and targeted interventions directed at stemming obesity-related disease.”

He conducted the study by comparing 62 dietary surveys from over 611,000 people in 51 countries over the course of 30 years. While the health effects of sodas, energy drinks, and other sugary beverages have long been suspected of dire health consequences, we now have definitive evidence that they are directly responsible for 184,000 deaths annually.