Report says sugary drinks pile on pounds

An extra can of soda a day can pile on 15 pounds in a single year, and the "weight of evidence" strongly suggests that this sort of increased consumption is a key reason that more people have gained weight, the researchers say.

"We tried to look at the big picture rather than individual studies," and it clearly justifies public health efforts to limit sugar-sweetened beverages, said Dr. Frank Hu, who led the report published Tuesday in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. He and others at the Harvard School of Public Health reviewed 40 years of nutrition studies that met strict standards for relevance and scientific muster. The work was funded by ongoing grants to his lab from the federal government and the American Heart Association.

Soft drink trends have marched lock-step with the growing obesity epidemic, but industry groups have long fought efforts to say one directly caused the other. Not all studies conclude that beverages are at fault, and the new analysis ignored some that would have discounted such a link, the American Beverage Association said in a statement issued in response to the study.

About one-third of all carbohydrate calories in the American diet come from added sweeteners, and beverages account for about half of this amount, the new report says. The main sweetener in beverages — high-fructose corn syrup — contains slightly more fructose than ordinary table sugar. Some studies suggest that pure fructose fails to spur production of insulin, which is needed to "process" calories, or leptin, a substance that helps regulate appetite.

A single 12-ounce can of soda provides the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of table sugar, the Harvard review says.

Courtesy AP

Bonnie - there is no purpose for soft drinks and other sweetened drinks. They have no nutritional value and contain chemical additives. Hopefully, our consumption of sodas will begin to decline as they have in India, which for the first time, showed a decline in cocoa Cola sales.