Its no secret, soda and other sugary drinks are not good for an individual's overall health, In fact research has shown a link between sugary sodas and tooth decay, heart disease, kidney stones and more.
Researchers from Tufts University discovered that people who drink just one or more sugar-sweetened beverage (like soda) a day are at an increased risk of developing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
According to reports on Yahoo Health, the research which was published in the Journal of Hepatology studied the dietary habits of 2,634 study participants who were asked in a questionnaire how often they drank sugar-sweetened beverages. Those drinks included caffeinated and caffeine-free soda besides other carbonated sugary drinks, non-carbonated fruit drinks, lemonade and fruit punches.
After participants underwent a CT scan in order to measure the amount of fat in their livers, researchers found a higher presence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in those who said they drank more than one sugary beverage a day as opposed to those who said they drink sugary beverage.
"It should be a global priority to substantially reduce or eliminate sugar-sweetened beverages from the diet," Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, senior author of the study and dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Massachusetts said, per foreign media reports.
That said, research from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claim that more than 25 percent of adults in the United States drink soda or fruit drinks at least once a day. But that's not all, according to medical experts; sugary drinks are killing as many as 184,000 adults around the world each year.
Furthermore, people who consume sugar drinks regularly, have a 26 percent greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes as compared to those who rarely consume such drinks. The risks are even greater for young adults and Asians. Men who drink one can of a sugar drink per day have a 20 percent higher risk of having a heart attack or even dying from a heart attack, BusinessRecorder noted.
Mozaffarian called for change in marketing strategies as far as promotion of sugary beverages. According to foreign media reports Mozaffarian said, ""We need to talk a lot more about the harms of sugar-sweetened beverages to change the culture so that you don't have Beyoncé and Michael Jordan (two people whom I admire) selling soda and sports drinks. Celebrities and athletes would never in good conscience advertise for cigarettes, so I think we need to change the culture to where it's just not okay to push soda."
