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CHICAGO (Reuters) - Sweetened fruit drinks are often
marketed as a healthier alternative to non-diet soft drinks but
are just as likely to cause weight gain and increase the risk
of diabetes, researchers said on Monday.
"The public should be made aware that these drinks are not
a healthy alternative to soft drinks with regard to risk of
type 2 diabetes," Julie Palmer and colleagues at Boston
University wrote in their report, published in the Archives of
Internal Medicine.
Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, is
closely linked to obesity and has become more common worldwide.
The findings came from a look at nearly 44,000 black women
in the United States who were checked from 1995 through 2005.
Those who said they drank two or more non-diet soft drinks
a day had a 24 percent increased risk for developing type 2
diabetes than those in the study who drank fewer than one
regular soft drink per month, the research team said.
Women who drank two or more sweetened fruit drinks per day
had a 31 percent increased risk compared to those who drank
fewer than one such fruit drink a month. Diet soft drinks,
grapefruit juice and orange juice were not linked to a higher
diabetes risk, the researchers said.
While pure orange and grapefruit juices also contain sugars
naturally, they may have a different metabolic effect or may be
more likely to be consumed as part of a meal, the investigators
said.
Soft drinks and sweetened juices are often consumed between
meals and may lead to snacking, they said.
An earlier study involving thousands of white women also
linked diabetes to both soft drinks and sweetened juices, the
report said.
Another study in the same journal found that eating fruits
and vegetables seems to ward off type 2 diabetes, perhaps by
preventing obesity or providing protective nutrients, including
antioxidants.
A third study found that a low-fat diet does not seem to
change the risk of diabetes.
"The common denominator that appears clear is that calories
trump everything," Dr. Mark Feinglos of the Duke University
Medical Center in North Carolina wrote in a commentary in the
same issue. "And certain nutrients, like high fructose corn
syrup, make it easier to overeat," he added.
"If you keep the calories low, you can probably eat almost
anything, which is what the low-carb diets show us. Specific
metabolic issues aside, an important reason that low carb works
is because you don't eat a lot of calories."
(Reporting by Michael Conlon; Editing by Maggie Fox and
Bill Trott)
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