Drinking Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Daily Linked to Diabetes

Simply untrue. It is, by the researchers' own admissions, the Calories.

More Americans now drink sugar-sweetened sodas, sport drinks and fruit drinks daily, and this increase in consumption has led to more diabetes and heart disease over the past decade, researchers reported at the American Heart Association's 50th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention...

Sugar-sweetened soda, sport and fruit drinks (not 100 percent fruit juice) contain equivalent calories, ranging from 120 to 200 per drink, and thus play a role in the nation's rising tide of obesity, researchers said. Previous research has linked daily consumption of these sugary beverages to an increased risk of diabetes, even apart from excessive weight gain.

It is all about the Calories, redux.

"The American Heart Association recommends a dietary pattern that is rich in fruit, vegetables, low-fat or fat free dairy products, high-fiber whole grains, lean meat, poultry and fish," said Robert H. Eckel, M.D., past president of the American Heart Association, and professor of medicine at the Anschutz Medical Campus of the University of Colorado Denver. "Always consider overall diet in the context of energy balance and make sure foods and drinks high in added sugars are not taking the place of foods with essential nutrients."

The American Heart Association recommends an upper limit of half of the discretionary calorie allowance from added sugars, which for most American women is no more than 100 calories per day and for most American men is no more than 150 calories per day from added sugars. Sugar-sweetened beverages should be limited to 450 calories or less per week (36oz), based on a 2000 calorie per day diet.

Blaming the messenger (soda) for the real message (you are consuming too many Calories, fatso) will not only get us nowhere, it will set back any attempt at resolving the issue even further than it already is.

The solution of the AHA is to support taxing all of us for the caloric irresponsibility of the fat.

Health policy experts suggest curbing the consumption of sugared drinks through an excise tax of 1 cent per ounce of beverage, which would be expected to decrease consumption by 10 percent.

"If such a tax could curb the consumption of these drinks, the health benefits could be dramatic," said Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, M.D., Ph.D., senior author of the study and associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

Rather than do the right thing and target the Calorie abusers, these morons would instead penalize all of us.

Reason enough to put the AHA out of business.

The sooner, the better.

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