Drinking sugary drinks - like soft drinks and juice - may kill as many as 184,000 adults per year. This according to a new study published in Circulation.
Dariush Mozaffarian, from Tufts University, Boston, and a senior author of the study, said the focus should be on cutting the drinks out of diets in order to save lives.
'It should be a global priority to substantially reduce or eliminate sugar-sweetened beverages from the diet,' he said.
'Some population dietary changes, such as increasing fruits and vegetables, can be challenging due to agriculture, costs, storage, and other complexities. This is not complicated.
'There are no health benefits from sugar-sweetened beverages, and the potential impact of reducing consumption is saving tens of thousands of deaths each year.'
The study only looks at statistics and makes an estimation of the effect. This can't prove what causes what. So you can't know for sure if 184,000 adults are killed every year. It could be significantly fewer... or it could be much worse.
But no matter the exact number I think Dr. Mozaffarian is right. Doing nothing while tens or hundreds of thousands of people are dying every year is not acceptable. This is the tobacco fight all over again.
