Sugary beverages linked to weight gain



A pair of studies examined the effect of the consumption of sugary beverages on the development of childhood obesity.

A pair of studies from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Boston Children's Hospital examined the effect of the consumption of sugary beverages on the development of childhood obesity.

The HSPH study made a connection between sweet drinks and hereditary factors that could cause the offspring of heavy soda drinkers to develop obesity - the leading cause of type 2 diabetes. Diabetics can buy Actos from Canadian and international online pharmacies to manage their insulin deficiency.

"Our study, for the first time, provides reproducible evidence from three prospective cohorts to show genetic and dietary factors," said Lu Qi, assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition at the HSPH. "Sugar-sweetened beverages may mutually influence their effects on body weight and obesity risk. The findings may motivate further research on interactions between genomic variation and environmental factors regarding human health."

To come to these findings, researchers distributed questionnaires regarding dietary habits to three groups - almost 7,000 women enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study, more than 50,000 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study and 25,000 individuals from the Women's Genome Health Study. 

By grouping these subjects into three subgroups according to their frequency of sugary beverage consumption - one to four per month, two to six per week and one or more per day - analysts determined that genetic factors impacting individuals who consumed one or more sweetened drink a day were approximately double that of those in the one per month subgroup.

No or low-calorie drinks reduce teenagers' obesity

In a related study appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, it was shown that keeping sugary drinks away from adolescents prevented them from packing on as many pounds as teens who were allowed to drink sweetened beverages.

"No other single food product has been shown to change body weight by this amount over a year simply through its reduction," said study co-author David Ludwig.

Researchers from the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children's Hospital surveyed almost 225 overweight or obese high school freshmen or sophomores who frequently consumed sweet beverages. The control group that was monitored while they made no change to their lifestyle habits kept gaining weight. The other group, whose homes had low-calorie drinks delivered to them by the researchers, gained an average of four less pounds.

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