Soft Drink Consumption Tied to Diabetes

A new study confirms that drinking a standard size can of soda daily is associated with an increased risk for diabetes.

Researchers at Imperial College London (United Kingdom) established a case-cohort study that included 12,403 incident type 2 diabetes cases and a stratified subcohort of 16,154 participants selected from eight European cohorts participating in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study; after exclusions, the final sample size included 11,684 incident cases and a sub-cohort of 15,374 participants. The researchers used regression models and random-effects meta-analyses to estimate the association between consumption of juices, nectars, and soft drinks, and type 2 diabetes incidences.

The results showed that one 336 g daily increment in sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened soft drink consumption was associated with a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.22 and 1.52, respectively, for type 2 diabetes. After further adjustment for energy intake and body mass index (BMI), the association of sugar-sweetened soft drinks with type 2 diabetes persisted, but the association of artificially sweetened soft drinks became statistically not significant, and juice and nectar consumption was not associated with type 2 diabetes incidence. The study was published in the April 2013 issue of Diabetologia.

“The observed association between sugar-sweetened soft drinks and diabetes in the present analysis is of similar magnitude as the association reported in a meta-analysis of eight prospective studies, which was based on 15,043 diabetes cases mostly from the USA,” concluded lead author Dora Romaguera-Bosch, PhD, MSc, and colleagues. “Whether BMI acts as a mediator or confounder and the magnitude of the effect of weight gain on these associations should be further assessed in studies with repeated measures of body weight.”

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Imperial College London