This entry was posted 9 years, 12 months ago.
In our times, the issues of healthy and unhealthy eating are being very vividly discussed in our media, that is why overwhelming majority of modern people are aware what kind of foods are considered unhealthy and linked to increased health risks, or what foods are supposed to be healthy and provide our body with great natural health benefits. Thus, we are trying to avoid consuming sweet foods, fried foods, the food high in glycemic index, all high calorie foods, and other types of foods which can cause weight gain or other unwanted effects. At the same time, not many people are aware about the fact that not only foods we eat, but also the drinks we consume can be very unhealthy and possibly even more dangerous to our health than some foods. Certainly, I am talking about sugary drinks, carbonated drinks, and all other sweetened drinks which most of us like so much.
The damage to public health caused by consuming sugary drinks or carbonated drinks is very often overlooked, and public awareness about negative effects of drinking even a glass of commercially produced fruit juices or carbonated drinks is quite low. We tend to give this kind of drinks to our kids, who learn consuming these unhealthy things since their early childhood. A group of scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, the US, who looked closer at the issue and tried to estimate the scale of damage to public health caused by soft or carbonated drink consumption found out really terrible facts. According to the findings presented recently in at the meeting of the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention and Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism society in New Orleans, public consumption of sugary drinks causes up to 200,000 deaths every year!
Those are the conclusions made by the researchers after studying the information and data extracted from the study titled The 2010 Global Burden of Diseases. It is carried out annually in 9 regions of the world in order to estimate the effects of each disease causing damage to public health. As it has become apparent from the study, every year about 133,000 deaths from type 2 diabetes are linked to increased carbonated drink or sugary drink consumption. About 44,000 deaths from heart disease should be also linked to carbonated drink consumption. 
About 6,000 deaths caused by cancer related to bad nutrition as well as unhealthy meals and carbonated drinks consumption. At that, the researchers underlined that about 78 per cent of registered death linked to sugary drink consumption occurred in low- income and middle-income families.
It is a known fact that increased consumption of sugary drinks is linked to weight gain and much highest chances to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some quite common types of cancer. According to the report of the researchers, the connections between drinking sugary beverages and increased risk of death are especially clear in the Caribbean, Latin America, and in Russia. In particular, in Mexico – the country known for its very high sugary drink consumption, – the rates of dying due to drinking sugary drinks go as high as 318 cases for 1 million adult people per year. At the same time, in Japan known for its healthy lifestyle and health nutrition, the same rates are estimated as only 10 people in one million adult people a year. In central and eastern Russia, quite high rated of death from heart disease caused by sugary drink consumption were detected.
It is actually not the first warning sign issued by scientists, and just a few months ago the findings were published saying that consuming just 1 can of sugary drink a day can double the risks for type 2 diabetes. The studies have shown that the calories we receive from sugary drinks are much more harmful than calories received from any other food or beverage. Thus, obtaining every 150 daily calories from carbonated drinks increase type 2 diabetes risk for 1 per cent, while receiving extra 150 calories coming from any other source elevates the stated risk only for 0.1 per cent. Those are the findings of a joint group of experts from the University of California-San Francisco, the University of California-Berkley, and Stanford University. Please, control sugary drink and carbonated drink consumption of yours and especially your kids since consuming this kind of drinks in large amounts is linked to very serious health conditions, and even premature death!
Author Info: Hi! My name is Carla and I am a 5th year medical student at HYMS. I am interested in alternative medicine and I have done months researching the topic of herbal medicine. Besides, I like interviewing people and learning more about their experiences with one or another type of herbal treatments. I am willing to contribute to this site with my knowledge, and I would be happy to help you out to the best of my ability with any specific questions or problems related to alternative medicine.
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