Reducing daily serving of sweetened drinks helps lower type 2 diabetes risk

Replacing a habitual daily serving of soft drinks and sweetened milk beverage with water or unsweetened tea or coffee can help reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, according to a research report released Friday by the University of Cambridge.

The conclusion was based on a previous study which included more than 25,000 men and women aged 40-79 years living in Norfolk, UK.

Study participants recorded everything that they ate and drank for seven consecutive days covering weekdays and weekend days, with particular attention to type, amount and frequency of consumption, and whether sugar was added by the participants, the researchers said.

They found that if study participants had replaced a habitual daily serving of soft drinks with a serving of water or unsweetened tea or coffee, the risk of diabetes could have been cut by 14 percent, and by replacing a habitual serving of sweetened milk beverage with the same unsweetened drinks, that reduction could have been 20 percent to 25 percent, Xinhua reports. 

Dr Nita Forouhi, of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge led the study. Forouhi said it adds further important evidence to the recommendation from the World Health Organization to limit the intake of free sugars in our diet.

This new research adds to previous research published in Diabetologia, which collected information from food frequency questionnaires across eight European countries. That previous work indicated that habitual daily consumption of sugar sweetened beverages was linked with higher risk of type 2 diabetes, consistent with the new findings.

Forouhi acknowledges the limitations of dietary research which relies on asking people what they eat, but their sample size was large with long follow-up and had detailed assessment of diet that was collected in real-time as people consumed the food/drinks, rather than relying on memory.

The research paper has been published in the journal Diabetologia.