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Diet soda doesn't cause diabetes

Sugar-sweetened beverages are risk factors for type 2 diabetes; however, the role of artificially sweetened beverages is unclear.

Diet soda doesnt cause diabetes

Moderate consumption of diet soda and other artificially sweetened beverages - previously implicated in raising the chance of developing diabetes - may not raise your chances of developing the disease.

Sugar-sweetened beverages are risk factors for type 2 diabetes; however, the role of artificially sweetened beverages is unclear. To examine the associations of sugar- and artificially sweetened beverages with incidence of  type 2 diabetes, researchers followed 40,389 Americans from 1986 t0 2006. The researchers obtained data on participants' intake of sugar-sweetened (sodas, fruit punches, lemonades, fruit drinks) and artificially sweetened (diet sodas, diet drinks) beverages from food-frequency questionnaires.

There were 2680 cases of diabetes over 20 years of follow-up. It was found that people who drank the most sugar-sweetened drinks (about 1-serving per day) were 16% more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than men who never drank those beverages. The link was mostly due to soda and other carbonated beverages, and drinking non-carbonated sugar-sweetened fruit drinks such as lemonade was not linked with a higher risk of diabetes. When nothing else was accounted for, men who drank a lot of diet soda and other diet drinks were also more likely to get diabetes. But once researchers took into account men's weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol, those drinks were not related to diabetes risk.

Prior studies have suggested that people who drink diet soda regularly might be more likely to get diabetes than those who stay away from artificially-sweetened drinks. But this study indicates that the link is a result of other factors common to both diet soda drinkers and people with diabetes, including that they are more likely to be overweight. In other words, people who are already diabetic or overweight are drinking more diet soda for those very reasons. This confirms the idea that it's really these differences between people who choose to, versus don't choose to and drink artificially-sweetened beverages that are related to diabetes. The researchers conclude that reducing sugar-sweetened beverage consumption by any means (including substitution with diet drinks) is a safer and healthier alternative.
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