You might want to put down that soda: researchers affiliated with the American Heart Association have recently concluded that in 2010, roughly 180,000 deaths were linked to sugary beverages.
They were able to arrive at this conclusion by analyzing data on how many sugary beverages people drank based on the 2010 Global Burden Diseases Study. They sectioned off this data by both age and sex, and then determined how that all corresponded to obesity rates. Finally, they figure out how big of a part obesity played in diabetes, heart disease, and cancers, and were able to estimate the impact of sugary beverages.
Sugared drinks have already been shown to be directly related to increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity, so this news doesn't come as a big surprise. What's perhaps most shocking is the extent to which these drinks are hurting the population.
In the study, Latin America and the Caribbean experienced the most deaths from diabetes out of all the countries, with 38,000, while East and Central Eurasia had the most heart-disease related deaths with 11,000. Mexico topped the list for per-capita consumption of sugared drinks and deaths (328 per million adults), wile Japan had the lowest per-capita consumption and deaths (10 per million adults).
The researchers estimated that in 2010 in the U.S., roughly 25,000 people died from sugary beverages, whereas in the same year 12,996 people were murdered. That's right, brands like Pepsi and Coca-Cola are responsible for twice as many deaths as all the killers in America.
"A large number of deaths each year are caused by drinking sugary beverages. Our findings should push policy makers world-wide to make effective policies to reduce consumption of sugary beverages, such as taxation, mass-media campaigns, and reducing availability of these drinks," says co-founder of the study Dr. Gitanjali Singh, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
A ban on sugary beverages over 16 ounces was recently proposed by New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and just narrowly missed being enacted when a New York Supreme Court Judge invalidated the ban the night before it was to take place.
What makes this situation so dangerous is what is known as structural violence in philosophical circles. Clearly, the system (structure) is causing a massive problem that is killing many people, but nobody is being held accountable. One soda every now and then is absolutely fine, and so companies like Pepsi aren't seen as making a dangerous product. Furthermore, sugary, caffeinated beverages are highly addicting, but are drugs that are deemed socially acceptable in modern society, allowing for unlimited use. Until we redefine what constitutes a drug and a danger to society, it is unlikely that this situation will improve.
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