Sugary Drinks Take a Deathly Toll

The New York Times reports:

Consumption of sugary drinks results in some 184,000 deaths worldwide each year, a new analysis found.

To reach their conclusions, scientists pooled data from dozens of dietary surveys and large prospective studies of the effect of sugar-sweetened beverage intake on body mass index and Type 2 diabetes, and of the effect of B.M.I. on cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. They used data on sweetened drink consumption from 62 national dietary surveys, which included more than 600,000 people in 51 countries surveyed between 1980 and 2010. The study is online in Circulation.

For confirming disease-specific causes of death, researchers used the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors 2010, an international analysis that is periodically updated.

Ouch.