Sugar Intake and Obesity Research
Overweight and obesity has recently emerged as a major global health problem. Along with obesity same causes lead to the variety of metabolic disease. The most extensive one is type 2 diabetes. Researchers do not fully understand why some people develop type 2 diabetes and others do not. It’s clear, however, that certain factors increase the risk. One of them is excessive consumption of added sugar. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the impact of consumption sugar sweetened beverages on risk of type 2 diabetes.
In the study by Malik et al.,the American Heart Association released the recommendation stating that daily added sugar intake should be no more than 150 kcal for most Americans. The statement identified sugar sweetened beverages as the primary source of added sugar in the American diet. Over past 30 years, the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages highly increased across the globe. For instance in the US, intake of these beverages increased from 3.9% of calories in the late 1970’s to 9.2% in 2001.
The documentary film states that since 1977 Americans have doubled their daily intake of added sugar (Laurie David et al., 2014). Trying to reduce the amount of fat in all food products and still keep it tasting good, food industry doubled the amount of sugar in these products. While amount of calories stays low in these products, it might be even worse for you to eat, than regular food. One 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola contains about 150 calories and 9.25 teaspoons of added sugar. While 150 calories sounds not so bad in a 2000-calorie diet, 9.25 teaspoons of added sugar is a little over of American Heart Association’s daily allowance of added sugar in 6-9 teaspoons.
In the study by Malik et al., over 50,000 women took part in the research. The research had terrifying results, those consuming more than one sugar sweetened beverage per day had an 83% greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared to those consuming less than one drink per month. In the Black Women’s Health study over 40,000 women were followed for 10 years. As a result, those who consumed two or more sugar sweetened beverages per day had a 24% greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared to those who consumed less than one drink per month.
In conclusion, sugar sweetened beverages intake has increased considerably across the world in last decades, which took part in rising rates of obesity and increasing risk of type 2 diabetes. It is necessary to understand and remember the adverse influence the excessive amounts of added sugar cause. Especially, when it possibly causes a variety of metabolic disease, like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, strokes, and even cancer. For these reasons intake of sugar sweetened beverages should be decreased and replaced by healthy alternatives. On other hand, researchers still cannot tell which factors cause …
