United States: Of more concern, a new study points out that intake of SSBs leads to over 2m new incidences of type 2 diabetes and 1.2m incidences of heart disease annually. Some of the regions which bears the highest health cost of sugary drinks include Colombia, Mexico, and South Africa as newly released Nature Medicine study of January 6 revealed.
The health Day also revealed that the new diabetes related study also found that a third or nearly half of new diabetes cases in Colombia result from the consumption of sugary drinks.
In their study, the authors noted that SSB in developing nations including Sub-Saharan Africa alone had led to the emergence of more than 21 percent of new cases of diabetes. They comprised about 23% of new diabetes and 13% of cardiovascular disease in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Before more of these years of life are lost to diabetes and cardiovascular disease, Lara-Castor says the world desperately needs more large-scale intervention trials to combat high SSB intake. What is it about sugary sweet drinks that cause so much harm?
The calorie content in these drinks is despicably high but offer little or no other nutrients and are not very satiating – and do not take long – to be consumed.
Long-term, daily use results in obesity, pre-diabetes, and other adverse effects characteristic of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease – two of the most life-threatening diseases globally.
In addition, SSB are relatively cheap and can easily be accessed in most of the retail outlets. “Ironically, SSBs are highly marketed and accessible in LMICs,” Tufts University School of Medicine’s Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, the study’s author and director of the Food is Medicine Institute said in this news release.
“Not only are these communities ingesting toxic products, they also frequently do not have adequate resources available to address the lifelong consequences,” Mozaffarian also said.
There is not much that can go wrong with the public health trend. According to the authors, as the nations evolves and the income per capita increases sugary drinks become more available as well as appealing.
New policies such as soda taxes can reduce growth in the problem.
