Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Increase Risk of Metabolic Syndrome and Diabetes

A review of stud­ies indi­cated that reg­u­lar con­sump­tion of sug­ary bev­er­ages, such as juice and soda, raised the risk of dia­betes, high blood pres­sure and other health mal­adies.

These effects stem from the link between the drinks and meta­bolic syn­drome, which is a group of risk fac­tors that ele­vate the chances of incur­ring stroke, heart dis­ease and dia­betes, accord­ing to the Hormone Health Network.

The risk fac­tors include decreased high-den­sity lipopro­teins (HDL) or good cho­les­terol, an expanded waist­line, high lev­els of blood fat called triglyc­erides, high-fast­ing blood sugar and ele­vated blood pres­sure.

“Sugar-sweet­ened bev­er­age con­sump­tion is steadily ris­ing among all age groups world­wide,” said the review’s senior author, M. Faadiel Essop, of Stellenbosch University in Stellenbosch, South Africa, in a press release. ​“Our analy­sis revealed that most epi­demi­o­log­i­cal stud­ies strongly show that fre­quent intake of these bev­er­ages con­tributes to the onset of the meta­bolic syn­drome, dia­betes and hyper­ten­sion.”

Metabolic syn­drome and dia­betes are respon­si­ble for 19 mil­lion deaths each year, reports the World Health Association (WHO). Therefore, because of the asso­ci­a­tion of sugar con­sump­tion to these con­di­tions, the pub­lic should take steps to reduce the intake of this food that is ubiq­ui­tous in the west­ern diet.

In the review pub­lished in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, the authors exam­ined 36 stud­ies that dealt with the effects of sugar-sweet­ened bev­er­age con­sump­tion on the car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem and sugar metab­o­lism. All of the stud­ies were con­ducted within the past decade.

While some stud­ies didn’t sup­port the con­nec­tion to meta­bolic syn­drome, most of them did. Many of the stud­ies involved par­tic­i­pants who drank more than five sug­ary bev­er­ages per week.

The most sur­pris­ing find­ings involved the small amount of con­sump­tion tied to adverse health effects. Studies that explored the tie between diet and dia­betes found two serv­ings per week were linked to a higher rate of dia­betes.

In an inter­view with Olive Oil Times, Essop said, ​“I would inter­pret the results on con­sum­ing two serv­ings per week with cau­tion. There are sev­eral lim­i­ta­tions in the study e.g. issue of con­found­ing fac­tors and self-assess­ments (in some cases) of the par­tic­i­pants. Another point to con­sider is that rel­a­tive risk does not prove causal­ity. For the lat­ter, one would need to prove causal­ity by ran­dom­ized con­trol tri­als.”

The exact amount of sugar intake that increases the risk of dia­betes and meta­bolic syn­drome isn’t known at this point. Nonetheless, med­ical experts are united in their belief that con­sum­ing large amounts of sugar poses a threat to health. How much sugar intake per day is con­sid­ered too much? Essop pro­vides some guid­ance below.

“Our pre­clin­i­cal stud­ies (unpub­lished) show that rel­a­tively mod­er­ate sug­ary bev­er­age intake does not elicit dia­betes. However, this does not detract from the big­ger pic­ture that excess sugar intake is harm­ful. The WHO rec­om­mends no more than 9 tea­spoons per day for men and 6 tea­spoons per day for women.

“This is an issue to focus upon, as a typ­i­cal sugar-sweet­ened bev­er­age like a can of Coca-Cola would con­tain around 9 tea­spoons of sugar. Even of more con­cern, a Starbucks Frappuccino would con­tain 18 tea­spoons of sugar! So the mes­sage is to be care­ful regard­ing the amount of sugar-sweet­ened bev­er­ages taken in and to be mind­ful of sugar con­tent.

“Prolonged intake of higher amounts of sugar can con­tribute to dia­betes onset with time. Of note, low­er­ing sugar-sweet­ened bev­er­age and sugar intake should form part of a multi-pronged approach to liv­ing health­ier that includes increased exer­cise, a bal­anced diet and lower stress lev­els.”