Diabetes Risk Increased with Artificially Sweetened Beverage Consumption
Artificially sweetened beverages (ASB) are associated with an increased risk of developing diabetes, according to a recent study. However, substituting a serving of ASB or sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) with water might reduce this risk.
The study included 64,850 women who enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative between 1993 and 1998. Participants completed lifestyle questionnaires that were used to measure ASB, SSB, and water intake and self-reported their diabetes status.
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_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________During the mean 8.4 years of follow-up, 4675 women had developed diabetes. Consumption of ASBs and SSBs was associated with an increased risk of developing diabetes. However, the researchers only found an increased risk of diabetes associated with ASB consumption for participants with obesity during subgroup analyses.
While substituting SSBs with an equal amount of ASBs did not significantly reduce the risk of developing diabetes, substituting either beverage with water was found to reduce the risk. Replacing a serving of ASB with water reduced the risk of diabetes by 5%, and replacing a serving of SSB reduced the risk by 10%.
“ASBs were associated with a 21% increased risk of developing [diabetes], approximately half the magnitude of SSBs (associated with a 43% increased risk). Replacing ASBs and SSBs with water could potentially reduce the risk,” the researchers concluded. “However, caution should be taken in interpreting these results as causal because both residual confounding and reverse causation could explain these results.”
—Melissa Weiss
Reference:
Huang M, Quddus A, Stinson L, et al. Artificially sweetened beverages, sugar-sweetened beverages, plain water, and incident diabetes mellitus in postmenopausal women: the prospective Women’s Health Initiative observational study. Am J Clin Nutr. 2017;106(2):614-622. doi:10.3945/ajcn.116.145391.