According to a study in the European Journal of Endocrinology, drinking more than two soft drinks a day doubles the risk of developing type II diabetes and Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adulthood (LADA). LADA shares features of both type I and type II diabetes. LADA has a more rapid onset of action than type II but includes the characteristic autoimmune destruction of special cells on the pancreas that make insulin as in type I. It tends to occur in adults, unlike type I diabetes which occurs in children. Some estimate that up to 25 percent of diabetics under the age of thirty-five have LADA. Many are likely misdiagnosed as having type II.
The researchers highlight that this risk occurs when soft drinks contain sugar or are artificially sweetened. They also found that the risk for these two types of diabetes climbed with the increasing consumption of soft drinks. Subjects consuming five glasses of soft drinks a day were ten times more likely to have type II diabetes and had more than four times the risk for LADA than those who drank less than two soft drinks daily.
Since this study used surveys to document the dietary habits of the subjects it doesn’t prove that drinking two soft drinks a day causes diabetes, but it certainly establishes a link. Other factors include that individuals who drink more soft drinks trend toward less healthy lifestyles, such as exercising less, and making poorer dietary choices. But here we don’t need to wait for a “gold standard” study to show proof of causation. We can only benefit by consuming less sugar and artificially sweetened soft drinks, thus possibly reducing our risk of diabetes by more than half.
