The perpetual junk science machine that is the food nanny establishment is out with another whopper: sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) cause diabetes.
Published in the British Medical Journal by an international team of researchers, a study reports that: (1) consumption of one SSB per day increases the risk of type two diabetes by 18 percent; and that (2) about 2 million cases of diabetes over the next 10 years will be caused by SSBs.
But the study is not based on original scientific research so much as it is statistical smoke-and-mirrors…
With all due respect, no diet has been shown to cause diabetes, nor does obesity.
Exactly right, this research fails to prove anything of note. This article, and your comment, rightly question this study, and expose its many flaws. The reality is many factors contribute to diabetes, such as genetics, overall diet, obesity. Attempts to attribute this complex public health condition to a particular product are an egregious oversimplification to say the least – and are not based in sound science. Thanks for sharing your perspective here.
-American Beverage Association
Do pre-diabetics have a sweet-tooth?
Wow, the Brits are really going to extremes in trying to demonize sugar and make a case that sugar is toxic. Last week, the SACN changed dietary recommendations for sugars to a ridiculous extreme of 5% of diet… of course, the real motive is to find a way to increase taxes.
This study was junk science squared. Thanks for exposing it. The machinations they went through trying to find a link are painful and even they admitted that none of the research they used was of high quality. Similar relative risks were found for artificial sweeteners, which defeats their claims. One of the clinchers, was their veritable admission that there was no real correlations between any of the self reported beverage consumption and self-reported diabetes, noting: “Each of the beverages showed significant non-linear associations.”