Cuba soft drinks daily increase the likelihood of dying early

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Consumption of carbonated beverages - whether sweetened with sugar or artificial sweeteners - may increase the risk of premature death, a new study suggests.

In a study that tracked more than 400,000 European adults for more than 16 years, the risk of premature death increased in those who drank two or more soft drinks a day, according to the report published in the Gamma Journal of Internal Medicine.

"Our findings on sugar-sweetened soft drinks provide further support to advocate for reducing consumption and replacing them with other healthy beverages, preferably water," said Neil Murphy, co-author of the study, an IARC researcher.

"For artificially sweetened soft drinks, we now need a better understanding of the mechanisms that may underlie this link, and we hope that a study like ours will stimulate these efforts."

Other factors
Murphy said the soft drinks themselves may not be the basis for this connection. The new findings do not mean that soft drinks cause premature death because "in these types of studies there are other factors that may be behind the link that we have noticed," he said by e-mail. "For example, high consumption of soft drinks may be an indicator of an unhealthy diet."

To take a closer look at the possible relationship between soft drinks and premature death, Murphy and colleagues examined data from the European Multinational Survey on Cancer and Nutrition, which followed participants from 1992 to 2000.

The diet was initially assessed including the consumption of soft drinks. Participants also answered lifestyle questionnaires that addressed factors such as educational level, smoking habits, alcohol intake and physical activity.

The researchers ruled out participants who were already suffering from conditions such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes at the start of the study, as well as those who did not provide data on the consumption of soft drinks.

When the researchers analyzed their data, taking into account factors that could increase the risk of death such as body mass index and smoking, they found that participants who drank two or more cups of soft drinks a day were 17 percent more likely to die early than those who drank less than one serving. In month.