Final: Premature Death with Diet Sodas
September 17, 2019
A New York Times article from Andrew Jacobs says, “There was a collective gasp among Coke Zero and Diet Pepsi drinkers this week.” This addresses how consumers are looking into the research relating diet drinks to early death.
A new study from the World Health Organization shows a link between diet soda drinkers and premature death. The study says those who drink diet sodas are twenty-six percent more likely to die prematurely than those who do not drink sugar-free drinks as often.
The study examined over 450,000 people throughout Europe over sixteen years who drank both sugary drinks and sugar-free drinks. Even though those who drank two or more glasses of sugary drink were eight percent more likely to die prematurely, those diet soda drinkers were still twenty-six percent more likely to die early.
Jacobs, from NY Times, later discusses how there were some questions as to whether those who drank diet sodas lead an unhealthy lifestyle with their eating. Maybe some consumers decided that if they have the “healthy” diet soda they will accompany it with some other unhealthy foods. There is the possibility that those who are already overweight or obese are drinking diet sodas, but it does not fix the weight problem that may be involved.
There have been discrepancies about sugary foods around since the 1970s and this is why there are diet sodas. Alternatives to sugars have been developed since then and are deemed safe to eat. Healthy lifestyles may be accompanied with such sugars, but are not evident to be of harm to consumers.
According to the Washington Post’s Laura Reiley, the American Heart Association says that sweetened drinks are the biggest source of added sugar in American diets. She tells about a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the percentage of obese children and adolescents has more than tripled since the 1970s. The different studies analyze each other to try and put things together to find the connection between all these things.
Some studies examined the fact that some participants were smokers or were consuming other unhealthy foods along with sodas. Some participants were already at risk as they may have been overweight or had cancer, heart disease or diabetes.
Laura Donnelly, in The Telegraph, explains that more people were drinking artificially-sweetened drinks were higher than those consuming drinks with sugar. This shows that people are going for the more “healthy” version of soda and it may not be helping consumers. Talking about the WHO research she says, “Their experts today said consumers were better off sticking with water.” This may seem obvious to some with this research found, but there will still be a number of people consuming soda daily. The link between diet sodas and premature death is there with these studies and raises concerns around the world.
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