Drinking a Can of Sugary Soda Every Day Can Boost a Person's Risk For Prediabetes, Study Finds (upi.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from UPI: Drinking a can of sugary soda every day can dramatically heighten a person's risk of developing prediabetes, a "warning sign" condition that precedes full-blown type 2 diabetes, a new study reports. A person who drinks a daily can of sugar-sweetened beverage has a 46 percent increased risk of developing prediabetes, said senior researcher Nicola McKeown, a scientist with the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. For this study, McKeown and her colleagues analyzed 14 years of data on nearly 1,700 middle-aged adults. The information was obtained from the Framingham Heart Study, a federally funded program that has monitored multiple generations for lifestyle and clinical characteristics that contribute to heart disease. Participants did not have diabetes or prediabetes when they entered the study. They self-reported their consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and diet sodas. The research team found those who drank the highest amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages -- six 12-ounce servings a week, on average -- had a 46 percent higher risk of prediabetes, if researchers didn't weigh other factors. Authors of the new study noted that prediabetes risk did decline when they included factors such as other dietary sources of sugar and how much body fat a person had. But it didn't fall much. The increased risk associated with sugary drinks still amounted to about 27 percent, McKeown said. Because the study was observational, it does not establish a direct cause-and-effect link between sugary drinks and prediabetes, McKeown said.

Comments

I hope it helps to say

[rewardian]

Smoking causes emphysema, lung cancer, and may complicate pregnancies.

Re:I hope it helps to say

[fahrbot-bot]

Smoking causes emphysema, lung cancer, and may complicate pregnancies.

Big deal. Breathing causes death -- 100% of all dead people were habitual breathers.

Re:I hope it helps to say

[Anonymous Coward]

Life is a sexually transmitted disease.

Re:I hope it helps to say

[__aaclcg7560]

Each minute brings you closer to death.

Re:I hope it helps to say

[reboot246]

Not me. I intend to live forever . . . . or die trying!

Re:I hope it helps to say

[Dunbal]

Wrong. 100% of all dead people are habitual NON breathers. I posit that NOT breathing causes death. Of course there are heretics who argue that death is caused by failures of one or more vital organ systems and that non breathing is merely a symptom of death but correlation != causation!

Re:I hope it helps to say

[Dunbal]

Only until you die! There are plenty of minutes after death that bring you further from death.

Re:I hope it helps to say

[PopeRatzo]

Each minute brings you closer to death.

That's not technically true. If you use a minute to decide to quit smoking, for example, or quit the sugary sodas, and it adds 10 years to your life, that minute has brought you farther from death.

Re:I hope it helps to say

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me fix your post to the tune of the submission headline: Smoking rewards you with emphysema, lung cancer, and may make pregnancies more interesting.

Re:I hope it helps to say

[QRDeNameland]

Life is a sexually transmitted disease.

And it's terminal, too.

Re:I hope it helps to say

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon those problems are over at least on USA, as Trump will nominate CEO of Philip Morris to his new secretary of health. After a while sugar and cigarettes are mandatory parts of the daily lunch at schools.

Re:I hope it helps to say

[DivinIT]

Well put!

Re:I hope it helps to say

[Anonymous Coward]

Very soon you will see Health Cigarettes for toddlers and pregnant women...

Re:I hope it helps to say

[Anonymous Coward]

Big deal. Breathing causes death -- 100% of all dead people were habitual breathers.

This looks like a cut and paste from the "Trump EPA transition pick" thread.

Re: I hope it helps to say

[Anonymous Coward]

Another comment from the Pope. Hiliary is going to jail.

Re:I hope it helps to say

[__aaclcg7560]

That's not technically true.

Whenever a friend complains about the ailments of life, I quickly remind them that death comes ever closer every minute. There are better things to do than complain about life.

Thank you Captain Obvious

[p51d007]

Did you know that ANYONE, who has eaten a carrot, has eventually died?

Re:Thank you Captain Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Immortality is not the goal. Longevity, and higher quality of life in the later years, is the goal.

This should be obvious.

Re:Thank you Captain Obvious

[PopeRatzo]

Did you know that ANYONE, who has eaten a carrot, has eventually died?

Now that's easy to prove false. I had carrots at dinner and I have not died. Now, I will eventually die, but you said, "has eventually died". This is why your fifth grade teacher was so insistent upon you learning grammar. Because bad grammar leads to sloppy thinking, which leads to a bigoted con-man with hair that looks like cotton candy spun from piss getting elected president.

Re:Thank you Captain Obvious

[Zontar The Mindless]

I noted several slices of carrot in my jirou chaofan last night. Yet I'm still here.

Re:Thank you Captain Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

upon you learning grammar

Yeah, well, in English, gerunds take possessives. So, "upon your learning grammar". (No, that's not a fragment, any more than any imperative sentence is - absent parts may reasonably be inferred.)

It's okay, though; an ablative absolute would probably be the most elegant way to construct that sentence. Too bad we lack them in English.

Lots of sugar in a soda

[ShanghaiBill]

Show a standard sugar packet to someone drinking a soda, and ask them how many packets would it take to equal the sugar in their soda. They will usually guess one or two. It is actually about twelve.

Re:Lots of sugar in a soda

[Anonymous Coward]

"...the only significant finding has been that if you force a baby squirrel to smoke seven hundred cannabis joints a day, he will become disoriented, and seem to take the laws of self-preservation less seriously, tending to play with his nuts rather than store them."

Re:Lots of sugar in a soda

[misexistentialist]

getting more value in their canned tap water than they thought

Re:Lots of sugar in a soda

[cfalcon]

The big reason for this is usually that something in the soda that is there for flavor, also is bitter. So sugar is added until it is sweet. The net effect usually is, there's way too much sugar for its level of sweetness.

I use soda exclusively as a mixer for alcohol. I probably average about two cans a week- it's been weeks since I had any, but I can recall a week where I had whiskey-cokes several times, so that's my guess.

Re:Lots of sugar in a soda

[Anonymous Coward]

It's 2016, who still drink sugar soda? Diet soda taste better anyway. Also your analogy is flawed because "Sugary Soda Are Made From Corn Syrup Not Granulated Sugar, Fact Finds".

Re:Lots of sugar in a soda

[drinkypoo]

I use soda exclusively as a mixer for alcohol. I probably average about two cans a week- it's been weeks since I had any, but I can recall a week where I had whiskey-cokes several times, so that's my guess.

I've taken to Zevia root beer, which IMO is their only really good flavor. Ironically, it's ginger-based, but their ginger beer is kind of crap. Great mixer with various whiskeys or similar.

Re:Lots of sugar in a soda

[arth1]

The big reason for this is usually that something in the soda that is there for flavor, also is bitter. So sugar is added until it is sweet.

Apart from bitter lemon, tonic water, birch beer and energy drinks containing taurine, i can't say I am familiar with any bitter sodas. Lots of them are highly acidic, but not bitter, which is a very distinct flavor from acidic.

Coca-Cola used to be bitter before it was carbonated and sugared, and actually contained coca extract, but that's a long time ago. Perhaps that's what you're thinking of?

Re:Lots of sugar in a soda

[Yaztromo]

Apart from bitter lemon, tonic water, birch beer and energy drinks containing taurine, i can't say I am familiar with any bitter sodas. Lots of them are highly acidic, but not bitter, which is a very distinct flavor from acidic.

Coca-Cola used to be bitter before it was carbonated and sugared, and actually contained coca extract, but that's a long time ago. Perhaps that's what you're thinking of?

Caffeine is quite bitter in raw form. Any soda that it is added to needs extra sugar to overcome the bitterness imparted by the caffeine.

Yaz

Re:Lots of sugar in a soda

[Anonymous Coward]

my guess would be zero packets of sugar in my soda. thats because its a diet soda loaded with yummy aspartame.

Re:Lots of sugar in a soda

[arth1]

Caffeine [wikipedia.org] is quite bitter in raw form. Any soda that it is added to needs extra sugar to overcome the bitterness imparted by the caffeine.

The tiny amounts of caffeine aren't going to make the entire drink bitter. We drink unsweetened iced coffee without feeling that it's bitter (unless the cheap bastards have used bitter or overroasted beans).

Re:Lots of sugar in a soda

[ChrisMaple]

Coke tried a variant for a while that used stevia and (IIRC) sucrose. It tasted terrible, almost as bad as diet Coke. Stevia has its uses, but doesn't work as a universal replacement for sugar.

Re:Lots of sugar in a soda

[Yaztromo]

It's not that it makes the beverage bitter -- it's that it makes it less sweet. The manufacturers add extra sugar to overcome the reduced sweetness in order to get the taste profile back to where they want it to be.

Yaz

Re:Lots of sugar in a soda

[drinkypoo]

Stevia has its uses, but doesn't work as a universal replacement for sugar.

I find it works best when it's mixed with erythitol or howtfever you spell that, I've been using it for months and still can't manage it reliably. Someone sells a product based on this idea as well, which I think is pretty good. Anyway, the root beer is the only flavor of Zevia which doesn't taste like a leaf.

What is that in non Freedom-units?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ounces??

in other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Shooting yourself in the face every day can boost your risk for bullet-in-head syndrome, study finds

Re:in other news

[Anonymous Coward]

shooting yourself in the foot can boost your chance of being an American now

Well no shit Sherlock!

[SensitiveMale]

Imagine that. Drinking pure sugar can raise the risk of pre-diabetes.

Re:Well no shit Sherlock!

[arth1]

Imagine that. Drinking pure sugar can raise the risk of pre-diabetes.

That's not what the study says. It only points out a correlation for a subset of the population.
There may well be an external cause for both a craving for sugar and a disposition for pre-diabetes. Or the causation might even go the other way, where craving for sugar is one of the first symptoms.
Jumping to conclusions is always bad, and especially when it seems so obvious.

I wish it was obvious

[Pollux]

Unfortunately, it is not obvious to the majority of Americans. Most still believe the old wives tale that fat makes you fat, and sugar is healthy in moderation. Just as bad are those that think that HFCS is bad, but sugar is OK, because sugar is natural. There's also the naturalists, that shun HFCS and sugar, but are fine with honey, agave nectar, and fruit juices. The truth: it's all bad.

I myself drank a can of pop a day eight years ago. Then, after watching Dr. Lustig's Sugar: The Bitter Truth on YouTube, someone finally explained to me the science, and I understood. But, I must admit, I still like my soda. I'm down to three cans a week, though I wish I had more self control to make it only one a week.

Yes, we all die. But how do you want to get there, and how soon?

Re:I wish it was obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really the sugar that's going to kill you.

It's just that there isn't a way to eat a reasonable diet that includes the regular consumption of sugar added foods.A soda a day adds 200kcal That's a lot and it adds up. Worse, sugar consumption tends to lead to more sugar consumption. You're conditioned to enjoy it.

I lost over 140 lbs through diet and excersize and I've kept it off. When you plan your meals and do the math, you quickly find that sugar added and carb laden foods simply do not belong in a healthy diet when you are sedentary. There is no way too pull it off. Only when I started adding more than 100 miles of road cycling per week and /needed/ lots of quickly metabolized energy for strenuous athletic activity did the carb laden foods return.

Re: I wish it was obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

We have $1 cans in the office.
I am down to 1 per week.

Re: I wish it was obvious

[thundercattt]

Same here. I watched the movie Cereal Killers and opened my eyes too. I have maybe 2 cans a month. Every now n then, you go ah I can go for a can of soda. Feel like shit after but hey.

Re:I wish it was obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

We can thank Ancel Keys for people believing in the whole myth that fat is bad

Eh, while I'm sure the fructose in orange juice is bad for my liver, I think the potassium is good for me considering I have high blood pressure. But oranges themselves are not unhealthy, because fiber slows absorption and also prevents you from eating too much.

You might be interested in Zevia. They use Stevia, which is a natural sweetner from a plant. It's not man made like other sweetners.

Re:I wish it was obvious

[AK Marc]

So, calories are unrelated to weight? I hear the opposite here and elsewhere all the time. And there are hundreds of studies that support that.

Re:I wish it was obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we all die. But how do you want to get there, and how soon?

I'm hoping to go out like Major Kong in Dr. Strangelove...as for how soon, I'm free this weekend if you've got a nuke handy.

Re:I wish it was obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that hard and hasn't changed much since I was born (early 70s). Eat moderate amounts of lean meat, veges, fruit and less-processed carbs, save the sugary/salty/fatty stuff for special occasions (translation: a few times a year, not a few times a week), and get off your arse and exercise regularly. It won't guarantee perfect health or longevity - nothing can do that - but if you do it consistently it will definitely bias your trajectory strongly in that direction.

All of the wild swinging between trends (avoid all fat, no I mean avoid sugar, hang on eat nothing but fatty meat, no wait you should be carbo-loading, eat organic/trendodynamic blah blah) is just a waste of time.

Re:I wish it was obvious

[Jzanu]

Calories are stored as fat, but fat accumulation comes from more sources than consumption of excess calories. Biological systems are very complex interlinked processes controlled by hormones.

Re:I wish it was obvious

[Dunbal]

Yes, we all die. But how do you want to get there, and how soon?

And you'll never see the truck that kills you tomorrow. That's the best bit. Seriously - obsessing too much about your health and lifespan is - not healthy.

Re:I wish it was obvious

[alvinrod]

Soda is fucking terrible for you. That's why I always make sure to dilute it with an equal part of rum or whiskey.

Re:I wish it was obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Lustig is a polemecist with an axe to grind and books to sell, who cherry-picks his data shamelessly. I wouldn't trust him any farther than you can throw him.

Re:I wish it was obvious

[harperska]

More specifically, calories are stored as fat in adipose tissue, and as glycogen in muscle and liver tissue. The total amount stored is as simple as calories in - calories out as dictated by thermodynamics. But where most people get confused is that calories burned by exercise are only a small portion of total calories burned. The rest are burned by the body simply doing everything it needs to do to stay alive. This number, however, is highly variable in activity and efficiency, differing from person to person, and varying over time due to the aforementioned complex interlinked processes. One source of variability is significant weight loss, which tends to slow the metabolism. Meaning on average, a person who weighs 150 lbs but used to weigh 200 has to eat less and exercise more to maintain that weight than somebody who has weighed 150 lbs their entire adult life.

Re:I wish it was obvious

[Dorianny]

The problem is that Americans categorize their meals as either "healthy" (skinless chicken breast with lightly steamed vegetables or "indulging" (cheeseburger with fries). The Mediterranean diet is so successful because most dishes tend to be stews mixing fats with vegetables , giving you healthy, tasty dishes that you can eat without having to keep telling yourself you are doing it for your health until inevitable getting tired and frustrated and "indulging"

Re:I wish it was obvious

[Bongo]

So, calories are unrelated to weight? I hear the opposite here and elsewhere all the time. And there are hundreds of studies that support that.

The issue is the causality. Gary Taubes researched the history of the science on this, going back pre-war, and how missteps were made along the way.

Today we all know about the energy balance, that people get fat because they eat too much and exercise too little.

But Taubes points out that this "energy balance" model, albeit thermodynamically correct, doesn't explain anything.

"Alcoholism is caused by drinking too much."

"Bill Gates is rich because he received more money than he spent."

"Children grow up because they overeat."

All those things are technically true but worthless. Something is driving the child to grow, and therefore, eat extra to get the energy to build up the body.

Something is driving the alcoholic to drink too much. Something is causing people to send Gates lots of money. Something is driving a person to overeat. And the usual answer here, has been that it is their bad character which is to blame. They are lazy and greedy.

And yet, there are world class athletes who, running marathon after marathon, still gain weight. And if you read Taubes' books, you can see all the stuff German scientists were already noticing, about the way people put on weight and how strange it is, that there must be more to it. But then WWII happened and those scientists were forgotten.

What it boils down to is that, the body processes carbs in a very different way to how it processes sugars. Sure the energy content is the same, calorie for calorie. But what the body decides to do with it is vastly different.

The normal level of sugar in the blood is one teaspoon. The body works to get any excess out of the blood stream as fast as it can, and it does that by packing it away into fat cells, because prolonged high blood sugar damages you. This is what people "mean" when they say your body "prefers" to burn carbs first -- it is desperately trying to get rid of the stuff. And, as sugar used to be a rarity, we don't have an off-knob, and the carbs actually drive us to eat more carbs. Perhaps an ancestral instinct to eat fruit to store fat for winter. Anyway, eating fat, on the other hand, does not have this effect. See Tim Noakes' stuff about athletes burning fat and lasting longer.

There's a lot of information about this out there now. It does completely overturn what we've been taught about nutrition and exercise for the last 50 years. But then during that same time, diabetes and obesity have grown to epidemic proportions. So maybe the advice really was wrong, yet they explained it away by labelling people as lazy.

I started eating high-fat low-carb about 8 years ago and went from a high carb, feeling lethargic and slothful and putting on weight, kinda guy, to feeling lighter and having excess energy and actually enjoying getting out and running. And of course, high-fat was thought to be terrible for you, but the cholesterol heart lipid hypothesis and all that are getting questioned too, now.

Re:I wish it was obvious

[Bongo]

What it boils down to is that, the body processes carbs in a very different way to how it processes sugars.

Ah, that should read: a very different way to how it processes fats

Re:I wish it was obvious

[zifn4b]

Soda is fucking terrible for you. That's why I always make sure to dilute it with an equal part of rum or whiskey.

And in the blue corner we have a pair of kidneys! And in the red corner we have a liver! This is going to be a great contest folks! Let's get ready to RUUUUUBMLE!

Re:I wish it was obvious

[paulpach]

Congratulations on losing 140 lbs, that is a truly astonishing amount of weight loss!

I also had great results by cutting off sugar and starchy food. Nothing as dramatic, but I second that they don't belong in a healthy diet.

Re:I wish it was obvious

[metalheadsunite]

I used to drink 4x 44oz regular sodas per day back in high school and college. I worked so many hours on my feet that I burned it off so i never saw the consequences. I then started noticing that all the people joining me at the gas station soda machine were morbidly obese individuals that looked like Mammy Tornado and had huge FUPAs. It started to come together for me that this would be me in a few years. Completely cut out soda after that. Now, as this comment said, I only drink it when mixed with whiskey. That's literally it. I can't even drink regular soda anymore, had to switch to diet. I should rightfully have died or gotten the Beetis from how much sugar I drank back then. Water tastes so much better.

Re:I wish it was obvious

[thoughtlover]

I'm glad you mentioned Dr. Lustig's video detailing his and his team's work.

However, you were wrong/mistaken on one of your points –HFCS is bad for you... it's bad for everyone **except, and Dr. Lustig said this, for Ironman-style athletes.

HFCS is both a sucrose and a fructose molecule, combined, therefore it creates a ton of bad co-enzymes in the liver when being processed. Apparently, athletes on that level have a more-efficient liver, yet most Ironmen would never eat HFCS.

America (and Canada, I believe) are the only places where soda/pop is sold with HFCS in it –the rest of the world seems to have banned it in favor of cane sugar.

Even rats aren't as satiated and end up overeating when fed HFCS versus standard corn syrup.

Not all sugars are the same, but they're generally bad for you in refined form. You can eat as much fruit as you want, but you have to have the accompanying fiber... juicing is just as bad for your liver as ethanol, according to the research by Dr. Lustig, therefore eat the whole food.

Re: I wish it was obvious

[thoughtlover]

Awesome! Cereal Killers 2 was great and showed the public just how bad 'no-net-fiber carbs' are a terribly-poor source of energy versus ketones.

Humans are supposed to be eating more fats than sugar... way more.

Re: I wish it was obvious

[thundercattt]

Technically most orange juice is considered bad because if you read the label ",from concentrate" that is a fancy term for processed.

Re:I wish it was obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

I think if you look into those rat studies, you'll find they were fed a diet high in fructose, not HFCS (which is only "high" in fructose compared to standard corn syrup).

Re:I wish it was obvious

[MercTech]

And drinking beverages with artificial sweeteners has been proven to cause diabetes in rats.
Maybe it will shake out and they will quit inferring causality and actually research the mechanism and learn exactly what is needed to keep the endocrine system in balance.

Re:I wish it was obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

> And drinking beverages with artificial sweeteners has been proven to cause diabetes in rats.

Really? Do you have a link for that? It's news to me.

News for morons.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stuff that doesn't matter in the least.

I'm fat, I know I'm fat

[Snotnose]

Like my Mtn Dew or Dr Pepper after lunch, how bad can it be?

I've got this 32 oz coffee mug I carry around with me, everyone who knows me knows it. Up until 11 it's full of coffee, after 11 it's full of water. But I gotta say, I always have an after lunch meeting of some sort or another and they always have either the dew or the doc, doc takes precedence.

Just cut the sugar, it's useless

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm lean and I'm fit. It's easy; I stuick with >20g carbs daily and absolutly nothing with added sugar.

To stay fit, I run. Feels good man.

Re:Just cut the sugar, it's useless

[Anonymous Coward]

After that post with zero insight based on 100% assumption of equivalence in a general population only one thing is clear. You are an idiot.

Re:Just cut the sugar, it's useless

[Anonymous Coward]

yea I know a guy that matches that exact description, he has type II, so using your logic you should develop it as well

have fun with that

Re:Just cut the sugar, it's useless

[Dunbal]

I was lean and fit. I had a heart attack at 28. Some of it is under your control. Some of it is not. Consider yourself lucky.

But it didn't fall much

[MerlynEmrys67]

I would call a 40% fall fairly significant... Of course I only had one semester of statistics in college - so what do I know about the subject

Re:But it didn't fall much

[Jzanu]

Big issue with that exaggerated figure is the "if researchers didn't weigh other factors" part because it invalidates the entire claim. Read your old statistics book again.

survival of the fittest

[Gravis Zero]

the free rein of food companies over the last 50 years has lead to a very dire situation where it's literally becoming a scenario of the survival of the fittest. the population is going to decimated because of the amount of sugar (especially fructose) being shoved into every food and plenty of them will die before having offspring. regardless of who's to blame, Darwin always wins.

Re:survival of the fittest

[Anonymous Coward]

> regardless of who's to blame, Darwin always wins.

Not in this case. Mortality rates are declining and life expectancy is increasing.

Looks like your 'threat' is a paper tiger.

Really?

[J053]

In other news, water is wet.

So what do I drink?

[Anonymous Coward]

Diet soda: cannot properly digest any fake sugars. HFCS and actual sugar is it.

Coffee: can't stand it

Tea: can't stand any of it

Milk: Expensive as fuck and it's not exactly healthy in large quantities either

Juice: Pain in the ass to do actual juice drinks, and any predone juice is full of bullshit and tastes horrible

Water: God, I can't fucking take drinking plain water. It makes me feel bloated and it does nothing to really wash things down with. Also, it makes me even thirstier than before because of all that. I have to drink something else to counteract the bullshit plain water does.

So tell me, what the fuck do I drink? Sorry, but regular soda is the only thing left besides a glass of milk or so.

Re:So what do I drink?

[Anonymous Coward]

Filtered water. Get a good filtering system, not a crappy one.

Re:So what do I drink?

[Jzanu]

Your description of the effect of water isn't describing water but the the effect of drinking excess sediment in the water. Buy a water filter, then drink filtered water.

Re: So what do I drink?

[Anonymous Coward]

Soda water moron. Same as soda with no sugar.

Re:So what do I drink?

[Anonymous Coward]

All water is the same to me. I have drank filtered water, shit water, bottled water, etc. It's all no good.

Re: So what do I drink?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sparkling water with a dash of bitters.

Re:So what do I drink?

[lxs]

In that case I have some bad news for you...

But seriously, get used to drinking water and/or tea.

Re:So what do I drink?

[stasike]

I drink water with a little bit of lemon juice.

Sometimes I drink carbonated mineral water (similar to soda only without sugar, sweeteners and artificial flavoring ;-) )

I also drink "fake coffee" - made from roasted grains. It is a little bit bitter and I drink it with a bit of milk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:So what do I drink?

[ChrisMaple]

By "fake sugars" are you including all non-sugar sweeteners? Stuff like saccharine isn't really meant to be digested, and it's so intensely sweet that only tiny amounts are used.

For a practical solution, you might try taking flavored seltzer and adding just enough sugar (pre-dissolved in water to prevent excessive bubbling) so that the result is tolerable. If you can reduce your sugar intake in this manner, you're a little better off.

Another alternative is V-8 (which is more expensive than soda) and its generic equivalents.

I'm not concerned

[ArtemaOne]

My odds of getting pre-diabetes is extremely low. Add 46% and it becomes extremely low.

Re:I'm not concerned

[hambone142]

I drink on the average, 2 cans of cola per day and have done so for decades. My blood sugar is low and my weight is normal. My lipid panel is normal and I've actually lost 10 pounds in the last couple of months.

I feel great. I cycle, hike and snow ski among other things (but not a lot).

I simply limit my food intake and minimize fats.

Re:I'm not concerned

[demonlapin]

Some people don't have to worry about this. Everyone knows someone who eats lots of pizza, drinks full-sugar sodas, and is rail-thin. This is for those of us who lack such metabolisms.

I know exactly how much exercise is required to allow me to eat anything I want and stay at an appropriate weight: high school football. About 14 hours a week of running around with pads, helmet, etc., plus four hours a week of weights. I don't have an extra 18 hours a week as an adult.

Re:I'm not concerned

[Dorianny]

A few months ago I read an article where a 100 year old women claimed that the secret to longevity was smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day. Just because you can consume 80+ grams of sugar a day without negative consequences doesn't mean that everyone can. In fact research has pretty much conclusively shown that for most people smoking and excessive sugar intake is quite detrimental to health and longevity

circle of life

[Anonymous Coward]

its just the revenge of all those beet, sugar cane and corn plants that we have brutally murdered.

But worse than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

But worse than that, it'll make you fat!

Obvious

[manu0601]

This is obvious: carbs have to go somewhere. Sport helps burning them in muscles, but for the sedentary, the only options for carbs in excess are making fat, or developing diabetes (or both!)

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone born has predeath. Only a healthy diet and an active lifestyle can prolong the effects.

Conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

"Because the study was observational, it does not establish a direct cause-and-effect link between sugary drinks and prediabetes"

QED

What about a 12oz glass of good ol' OJ?

[Overzeetop]

Will that also cause pre-die-a-beetus?

Re:What about a 12oz glass of good ol' OJ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, yes.

I am a type 2 diabetic and am successfully controlling it with just diet and exercise (my A1C readings are well in the normal range). I get most of my calories from fat and protein, and minimize carbs.

Fruit juices have very high amounts of carbohydrate. And in some ways, they are worse can sodas that are sweetened with sucrose. The sweetness in fruit juice is from fructose, which is only metabolized by the liver. The liver stores it and can release glucose into the blood stream to provide energy when you've not eaten. This manifests in many type 2 diabetics as very high blood sugar levels in the morning, called "dawn phenomenon". It's fine to eat whole fruits once in a while because they have enough complex fiber that it mitigates the high carbs somewhat. But I definitely avoid the juice.

Prior to the diabetes diagnosis, my diet was built around rice, noodles and other high carb foods, with two Coca Colas a day. I was 205 lb (but carried the weight such that nobody really considered my overweight). About 5 years ago, I developed non-alcoholic fatty liver. About two years ago, my doctor told me that my blood sugar readings were high (but did not diagnose diabetes or pre-diabetes). Early this year, my blood sugar was high enough that I was diagnosed full-blown type 2 diabetes.

Since then, I removed all rice, noodles, breads and potatoes from my diet. I started paying attention to nutrition and get most of my calories from fat and protein as above (about 2/3 from fat and 1/3 from protein) and minimal carbs. I also started paying attention to the total number of calories that I eat. I know that everything says that more calories than your requirement means you gain weight and less means that you lose weight. But I don't think that it's that simple. Eating the right things seems to affect me more than the amount that I eat. Although eating right kind of regulates the amount; it's really hard to eat a huge number of calories when you are limiting carbs.

I also stated bicycling to work at least 3 days a week. It's 15 miles each way, with significant elevation changes. At first, it was really hard, but I easily do it now in about 50 minutes each way and feel great.

I also don't have non-alcoholic fatty liver anymore. I don't have high blood pressure anymore. My weight dropped rapidly down to about 145 lb, where it's been stable for a while now. I have far more energy than I did before and am not tired all the time. And I am not taking any medications anymore, after being on blood pressure medication for decades and a brief time on metformin after the initial type 2 diagnosis.

Now don't get me wrong, I do believe that some people are predisposed to blood sugar problems. Some people probably won't ever develop type 2 diabetes, no matter how many carbs they eat, or no matter how much they weigh. But in my case, it took almost 50 years of carb abuse before my body threw up a white flag. Based solely on my experience though (which is highly biased, and an anecdotal sample of one), I would suggest to anyone that it's a good idea to understand what you are eating and to have some sort of balance to your nutrition. And just eating packaged foods and restaurant foods all the time isn't good for anyone.

Re:What about a 12oz glass of good ol' OJ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will that also cause pre-die-a-beetus?

Yep. 100% fruit juice usually has about the same percentage of sugar as a soda. It's just as bad for you, really, though people tend to drink less of it - a typical on-the-go fruit juice carton is a ~250 mL, while a standard bottle of coke is 600 mL.

"pre"diabetes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess, we all have "predeath syndrome" as well.

Story paid by those that want to tax

[neoRUR]

This story brought to you by those that want to Tax sugar water (soda drinks) so that we won't drink it as much so we will all be healthy, so future health costs will be cheaper...

Who cares,we are not going to live that long

[rossdee]

Most of us will die in the nuclear war and its aftermath

Re:Who cares,we are not going to live that long

[Dunbal]

No. Hillary lost. Nuclear war cancelled.

Re:Who cares,we are not going to live that long

[Zontar The Mindless]

Yes, we all know that Vladimir won't have to rattle sabres any longer to get what he wants.

Re:Who cares,we are not going to live that long

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they'll probably sit down and find a way to do a billion dollar grab from citizens of their respective countries and laugh all the way to the bank.

Re:Who cares,we are not going to live that long

[ChrisMaple]

The problem is that we don't know what Vladimir wants, or if he gets what he wants, will he want more?

Does he just want a warm water port? Does he want all the land that used to be the USSR? Does he want totalitarianism? Does he want the whole world?

Re:Who cares,we are not going to live that long

[Anonymous Coward]

Putin wants confrontation. That's how he remains popular and in - and shields himself away from his many enemies.

Re: Thought I'd something more to say

[Anonymous Coward]

Ticking away the moments
That make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours
In an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground
In your home town
Waiting for someone or something
To show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

So you run and you run
To catch up with the sun
But it's sinking, racing around
To come up behind you again
The sun is the same
In a relative way
But you're older
Shorter of breath
And one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet
Desperation is the English way
The time is gone
The song is over
Thought I'd something more to say

A Can of Sugary Soda Every Day Boost Risk

[b783719]

A risk is bad and
bad is negative, but
two negatives equals a positive,
so all I need to do is to drink 'Two' Cans of Sugary Soda Every Day, right?

Re:A Can of Sugary Soda Every Day Boost Risk

[ChrisMaple]

Two cans in a row are summed, so they remain a negative. To get a positive, they must be at right angles so that they are multiplied. Drink one standing, and the other lying down.

Words have meanings?

[I75BJC]

Every living person except people with diabetes is in a Pre-Diabetic condition. Every living person is in a Pre-Death condition. We really should stop this bullshit with our language. We really should TRY to be honest with other people and ourselves.

Re:Words have meanings?

[Anonymous Coward]

No they do not. After 8 years of President Obama words really really have no objective meaning on their own. Words mean whatever the person in power says they mean.

"Well I am going to make the world safe for children. By that I of coarse mean I am going to round up all the children and send them to the Epstein home for troubled youth. Then I will arrest the parents for not taking better care of their kids. I know they (e.g. the parents) did not do a good job of parenting because they just allowed a three lettered agency of the government to round up their kids and send them away and be exploited by said agency in the name of protecting kids.

Don't agree with me, then you are a racist and a child hater. By racist, I of coarse mean you disagree with me. "

-President Obama

Re:Words have meanings?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Semi-literates are at their most entertaining when they're complaining about words. Keep up the good work.

Re:Words have meanings?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh, that stung. You were rather course with him.

Re:Words have meanings?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's just another amateur Trump wannabe loser.

Pre-diabetes?

[backslashdot]

What about pre-pre-diabetes? or pre-pre-pre-diabetes? Being born can get you that one.

They didn't include the other factors because

[Anonymous Coward]

they decreased the risk and disproved their pre-desired hypothesis. Another junk science propaganda piece from the Slashduh Editors.

Lots of sugar is not good for you, but if you have a healthy pancreas and spleen, a single can of soda a day will not disrupt that.

Part of the problem is that doctors seldom bother with a diagnosis of pre-diabetes, partly because they also don't bother doing anything serious about treating it. So patients don't take it seriously. Make patients take a displeasing pill until the condition goes away and the incidence of real diabetes will go down.

Re:They didn't include the other factors because

[lxs]

The best treatment is a change of diet, but many people literally rather die than eat a sprig of broccoli.

Beer is good for you maybe trump can lower the dri

[Joe_Dragon]

Beer is good for you maybe trump can lower the drinking age. So teens drink less pop.

just more ways to get a Pre-existing condition

[Joe_Dragon]

just more ways to get a Pre-existing condition. But the up side is jails / prisons systems do not have them and they do a lot more then the ER does.

I'm sorry, is this news?

[PensacolaSlick]

Um, welcome to the '90s. Seriously, Slashdot?

Always the same trick to create panic

[Anonymous Coward]

They always tell you by how much it increases your risk, but never of how much the actual risk is. If you have a .1% chance to die of something and doing X increses that chance to .2%, that is a 100% increase of the risk, but still just a .2% risk.

On a more serious note:

[Anne Thwacks]

I have had type 2 diabetes for about 10 years, and have spoken to loads of other sufferers and some medical researchers.

In the run up to being diagnosed, I felt completely exhausted, and an absolute craving for sugar. This was during the pre-diabetes state. The most likely explanation is that I was developing insulin resistance, and so was unable to digest the sugar from the Mars bars and Coca-Cola. This is common in insulin resistant type 2 diabetes (the other kind is where you don't produce enough insulin - both are type 2, cos no one had the good sense to call one of them type 3).

So yeah, people who cannot digest sugar are likely to crave more of it to get some energy.

As soon as I was diagnosed and put on Metformin, I stopped wanting coke and Mars bars, and my eyes stopped hurting (unless my blood sugar is high).

The medical profession cannot tell cause from effect.

Re:On a more serious note:

[Anonymous Coward]

Anne thwacks what, or whom, exactly? And have you ever been arrested?

Eyes hurt? What has that got to do it!

The medical patient cannot tell effect from cause!

Re:On a more serious note:

[ChrisMaple]

It has long been claimed in the health-enthusiast press that excessive sugar consumption causes excessive production of insulin, which overshoots the body's need for insulin. The leftover insulin is damaging by itself, and wears out the mechanisms which work with insulin to transform sugar - hence insulin resistance. Insulin resistance causes the body to produce even more insulin to compensate, in a destructive positive feedback loop. Eventually, this exhausts the ability of the body to produce insulin, and you get full blown type 2 diabetes.

Thus, by this argument, the two varieties of type 2 are actually actually stages of the same phenomenon.

Re:On a more serious note:

[Anne Thwacks]

Eyes hurt? What has that got to do it!

When your blood sugar level is high, the aqueous humour in your eyes gets filled with sugar, which alters its refractive index and can make it opaque. The result is that your eye muscles continuously try to focus your eyes but are unable to do so, and its very tiring.

What makes you think I cannot tell cause from effect? Are you suggesting that my pre-diabetes condition was brought about by high sugar intake? Few people would have a lower sugar intake than be before the diagnosis. I did not eat sweets or put sugar on my food or drinks, or have sugary drinks even when young (I had diluted squash as a kid, but generally only once a week on Saturdays). The craving for sweet things came after the pre-diabetes diagnosis, and medical researchers say this is common where your diabetes is due to insulin resistance.

Re: On a more serious note:

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you would see the humour in that case, but other people just can't. /insensitive clod pun off.
Good to hear you're in control of the condition, Anne.

We worry too much

[kuzb]

When you spend all your time trying to live forever, you tend to forget to live life.

There are constructive uses for sugar, too.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Lupus, and I do not digest food very well. This means I have a horrible time keeping my weight up, but I also have a difficult time staying awake. Soft drinks with caffeine are a miracle for me. They help me stay at a reasonable weight and provide caffeine to keep me awake. Provigil does not work for my fatigue, and I would rather not take amphetamines. That means I can drink soft drinks and be far healthier and have a better quality of life than I could reasonably expect without them. Sugary drinks are like forks or automobiles. You can run someone over with a car or jam a fork in your eyes, but they work just fine when used under appropriate conditions.

Re:There are constructive uses for sugar, too.

[ChrisMaple]

You can buy caffeine pills.

In other news, mass buying of Christmas Trees

[guacamole]

.. causes Christmas to arrive.

Another irrelevant study

[OpenSourced]

Come on. This is supposed to be a nerds' site. You should know that this kind of studies are useless because there is no way to prove causation. Perhaps people who like soda are more prone to diabetes in the first place. Perhaps (oh! sudden insight) they don't only drink soda but also overeat and don't move their sorry asses, like, ever.

When somebody makes a study of a thousand vegetarians that run 5K every day, and take half and force them to drink a glass of soda every day for ten years, and then compare the results with the other half, then I'll be interested. Until then, extracting a variable like this from such an interdependent mess as is human health, is simply the embodiment of a strong desire for publication, nothing else.

Re:Another irrelevant study

[serviscope_minor]

You should know that this kind of studies are useless because there is no way to prove causation.

The thing is, if you're being an idiot about it (as many of the correlation != causation parroters here do) you can never prove causation. The reason being is you have to prove the non-existence of some underlying casuative effect. And it is of course impossible to prove a negative.

I mean how do you know that applying a force to an object causes it to move? I claim that it doesn't. You see it's actually unicorns using magic to make the objects move, but they also use magic to make it look like something's applying a force in order to hide themselves from us because they don't want us to find out about magic.

Is that stupid? You betycha! Can you prove it's not true? Nope. It is absolutely and completely definitely not true? duhhhhhhh.

Re:Another irrelevant study

[Anonymous Coward]

You should know that this kind of studies are useless because there is no way to prove causation.

In these situations you must follow the money (who paid for the research), because all studies like this produce the results the researchers were paid to produce.

Coffee FTW

[wkwilley2]

That's exactly why I drink more coffee now than soda, I normally use a tablespoon of sugar for a 12 oz cup of coffee, compare that to a coke or pepsi and you've cut your sugar consumption by 3/4.

Re:Coffee FTW

[b0bby]

If you drink good coffee you can leave the sugar out entirely!

Re:Coffee FTW

[wkwilley2]

Indeed so, I'm just still waning myself off sugar so a little bit goes a long way.

A new rhyme

[johnsmithperson123]

A soda a day keeps the insulin far, far away.

Diet soda is cheaper to manufacturer

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were ever curious to why "Diet" Coke is marketed more than Coke.

The reason is not because they care about your health. (Otherwise they would market vegetable juice or water).

The reason is that Sugar and HFCS is more expensive than artificial sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners require far less material to get that yummy inverted sugar taste that you all love.

No duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

News at 11.

No shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Really?

Well you don't say.

[Computershack]

What a surprise that drinking lots of something that is more than 10% made from sugar can contribute towards pre-diabetes shocker.

Opening car doors proven to cause accidents

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news... Opening doors has proven to be the cause of car accidents. 100% of the people in a car accident have opened car doors sometime before the accident.

Captain Obvious

[dskoll]

No, really? Overloading your system with sugar is bad for you??? Who knew???

Seriously, watch the documentary "Sugar Coated" on Netflix. Excellent and sobering.

I wouldn't know...

[dddux]

I'm drinking just herb, green and black tea, and wine and beer. What's a "sugary soda"? Only idiots drink that, really.