New Study Shows Sugary Drinks May Increase Cancer Risks

A new study shows some of our favorite drinks could lead to cancer.

Researchers posted a new study in the journal PLOS Medicine that looked at health and nutrition information gathered from 100,000 French adults. Over eight months, researchers compared how the artificial sugars people consume affect their health and risk of getting cancer, Eat This, Not That! reports. 

The culprit behind the risk could be found in the sugary beverages some of us drink every day. 

“To our knowledge, no previous cohort study had directly investigated the associations between quantitative artificial sweetener intakes per se — distinguishing the different types of sweeteners — and cancer risk,” said study authors Charlotte Debras and Dr Mathilde Touvier of the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team (EREN) at the French Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm) at Sorbonne Paris Nord University to Eat This, Not That!. “In this large population-based study…artificial sweeteners (especially aspartame and acesulfame-K), which are used in many food and beverage brands worldwide, were associated with increased cancer risk.”

However, researchers say sugary drinks may not necessarily be the direct issue with artificial sugars often being included in several food items like cereal, gum, candy, and other products. 

“These results need to be replicated in other large-scale cohorts and underlying mechanisms should be clarified by further experimental studies,” Debras and Touvier say. “Besides, they should not be interpreted as [a suggestion] to consume sugar rather than artificial sweeteners! Excessive sugar intake is definitely causing many chronic diseases … and should also be limited.”