Men who drink one 12-ounce can of a sugar-sweetened beverage each day have a 20 percent higher risk of developing heart disease than those who don’t or who indulge only occasionally, according to a study released Monday by the American Heart Association.
Participants who drank less — a few times a month — did not show any increased risk for heart disease. The Harvard School of Public Health study did not link artificially sweeted drinks such as diet sodas to an increased risk of heart disease.
The national study is one of the first to specifically tie sugary beverage consumption to coronary heart disease, state health officials said during a news conference Monday to bring attention to risks of sugar-sweetened beverages.
"This is certainly not the only reason for the obesity epidemic, but a very, very good place for us to begin making changes in our diet," said Dr. Beatriz Rodriguez, an endocrinologist and an American Heart Association volunteer in Hawaii.
The American Heart Association will continue to push for a state tax on sugar-sweetened beverages at the state Legislature, said Corilee Watters, a nutrition science expert and association volunteer.
Such legislation has been introduced for the past few years but hasn’t gotten far. "We’re really wanting to have policy options that create a healthy environment," Watters said.
Loretta J. Fuddy, state health director, said children and adolescents nationwide take in between 10 and 15 percent of their calories from sweetened beverages, and about 1 in 3 Hawaii children entering kindergarten is obese.
"We’re very concerned that our children are not going to be healthy when you look in the long range … and that their lives may be cut shorter than their parents’," Fuddy said.
In the national study that began in 1986, 42,883 men were sent food intake questionnaires every four years and health and lifestyle questionnaires every two years until December 2008. Participants were primarily white, 40 to 75 years old, and all were health professionals.
Thousands were eliminated at the start for having family history of cancer, stroke, type 2 diabetes and other illnesses. Other risk factors that can lead to heart disease, such as smoking, alcohol consumption or lack of physical activity were accounted for.
"It (the study) really teased out the sugar-sweetened beverage piece," Fuddy said.
Participants who consumed sweetened beverages daily also had higher levels of harmful lipids (fatty acids) and lower levels of helpful ones, along with high levels of inflammation protein markers.
Watters said targeting sugary beverages is important because, unlike food, they do not trigger signals the body would send to regulate intake.
"The issue with liquid calories is that our body doesn’t actually recognize (them)," she said. "If you were to consume sugar in the form of jelly beans, your body actually recognizes … it, and it reduces overall consumption."
