Sugar-rich Beverages Serve as a Direct Route to Cancer

Dare to Choose a Sugary Beverage Again!

​Putting a full stop to sugary drinks and beverages seems next to impossible despite the overwhelming controversies surrounding it. Weekend cheat meals, late-night parties or celebrations are never complete without our favorite colas. We take comfort in choosing diet colas and beverages but the basic truth remains that at the end of day anything that contains sugar is never going to be healthy. Sugar indeed is white poison. Sugary drinks aren’t restricted to sodas but extend to fruit juices and fizzy pops that are overladen with sugar. These beverages saw the limelight initially because of their tendency to cause weight gain leading to increase in obesity and overweight rates. Debates on imposing taxes for these sugary beverages aren’t short and the beverages have definitely caused a spike in weight gain rates worldwide.

If pizza or burger isn’t enough to spoil our health these foods go hand-in-hand with fizzy pops that act as the icing on the cake ruining oral health, causing dental caries and leading to tooth removal too in kids as young as 5-6-year-olds. Besides causing a surge in oral problems and weight issues there are theories now that consuming these sugary beverages might increase the risk of cancer too. The link between obesity and its increased risk on cancer is evident but proofs for sugary drinks and the risk of cancer is still limited. This provoked a group of French researchers to analyze the relationship between consumption of sugar drinks (sugar sweetened beverages, 100% fruit juice), artificially sweetened beverages and the risk of cancer that includes breast, bowel and prostate cancer as well. The study included more than 1,00,000 healthy French adults who participated in the study whose average age was 42 years. Each of the participants completed at least two 24-hour online validated questionnaires that helped in assessing the intake of 3,300 different foods and beverages and were followed up for up to 9 years.

The research team took into account several risk factors of cancer such as age, sex, education level and family history and the relationship between daily beverage consumption and the cases of cancer reported by participants were cross checked. It was seen that consumption rates across the male gender was generally higher compared to the female gender (90.3 mL vs 74.6 mL). Follow-up on the participants revealed that 2,193 of them were affected by cancer (693 breast cancer, 291 prostate cancer and 166 colorectal cancer) and the average age of the participants was 59 years. For every 100mL increase in consumption the risk of overall cancer increased by 18% and that of breast cancer increased by 22%. Though artificially sweetened beverages were not linked with a higher risk of cancer compared to fruit juices and other sugary drinks it might also be because of the fact that the number of participants consuming artificially sweetened beverages was comparatively low. The researchers theorize that the increase in cancer risk due to beverage consumption could be due to the presence of additives in soda or due to the effect of sugar in sugary drinks on visceral fat (stored across organs such as liver and pancreas), blood sugar levels and inflammatory markers and all of these are linked to increased cancer risk.
​
All said and done, we cannot come to definite conclusions as this is only an observational study and it might also be possible that those who drink more of sugary beverages might also be habituated to other unhealthy behaviors such as eating more processed foods and leading a sedentary lifestyle that increase the risk of cancer. Its wise to minimize the consumption of any sugary beverage and perform regular exercise to lead a healthy life. Get in touch with reputed dietitian nutritionists at www.firsteatright.com to help in planning a healthy diet plan that’s good for the body.