Still drinking soft drinks or sugar
sweetened beverages? It is time to stop. A new study shows us what
just two weeks of drinking soda can do to your heart. And the subjects were young
healthy people.
Sugary drinks have been linked to obesity, heart disease, high
blood pressure and diabetes. What is worse,
the more soda (or sweet tea, or lattes) people drink the more likely these
outcomes. The sugar industry and soft drink companies argue that association
isn’t proof that one actually causes the other. But you have to agree
that when population studies show a link again and again, and the mechanism of
harm is plausible, it is silly to deny such strong evidence.
This is exactly how how we proved smoking
cigarettes caused disease. But when it comes to discovering the effects on a
habit on our health there’s nothing like controlled experiments. And the best
evidence to prove cause and effect comes from double blind placebo controlled
studies.
And when you’re studying heart disease, all the
study has to do is look at changes in markers of heart disease risk, such as
LDL cholesterol, apoB, triglycerides and
uric acid in the blood.
A new study did just
that. The study has been published online ahead of print in the American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The researchers recruited a group of 85
people aged 18-40, and divided them into 4 groups. For 2 weeks participants
drank beverages sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) making up 0
percent, 10 percent, 17.5 percent or 25 percent of their daily caloric
requirement. The participants were blinded to their drink content, and in order
to do that the 0-percent drink for the control group was sweetened with
aspartame.
Within 2 weeks, the people who were on the HFCS
drinks had higher levels of LDL, triglycerides and uric acid, and the higher
the HFCS they drank, the higher the level of heart risk factors.
Although the American Heart Association and the
World Health Organization recommend that people limit added sugar to no more
that 5 percent of daily calories, very few
people do so, and levels of added sugar in the
10-20 percent are typical of the American diet. By this study’s assessment,
the average American person’s sugar intake is certainly
enough to increase cardiac risk.
Would replacing HFCS with regular sugar (sucrose)
make a difference? Not likely. The fructose content in table sugar is 50
percent, compared to 55 percent in HFCS – just a slight difference – and since
fructose is metabolized in our body in a way that promotes fat production,
raises triglycerides and affects cholesterol levels, either one of these
sweeteners would probably have the same negative effects; there's no reason to
assume that sugar is any more safe than HFCS.
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