AHA Meeting Presentation Purportedly Links Sugary Drinks to “180,000 Deaths Worldwide”

Research presented at the American Heart Association’s (AHA’s) latest scientific meeting has reportedly concluded that “sugar-sweetened sodas, sports drinks and fruit juice may be associated with about 180,000 deaths around the world each year,” according to March 19, 2013, press release. Featured at AHA’s Epidemiology and Prevention and Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism 2013 Scientific Sessions, the abstract in question apparently relied on data from the 2010 Global Burden of Diseases Study to calculate “the quantities of sugar-sweetened beverage [SSB] intake around the world by age and sex; the effects of this consumption on obesity and diabetes; and the impact of obesity and diabetes-related deaths.”

The results allegedly linked SB intake to 133,000 diabetes deaths, 44,000
deaths related to cardiovascular diseases, and 6,000 cancer deaths worldwide
in 2010, raising concerns about the disproportionate impact on low- and
middle-income counties. In particular, the report’s authors estimated that in
terms of mortality associated with SSB consumption, Latin America/Caribbean
had the most diabetes deaths, East/Central Eurasia the most cardiovascular
deaths, and Mexico the highest death rate of the world’s 15 most populous
countries, “with 318 deaths per million adults linked to sugar-sweetened
beverages.”

“In the U.S., our research shows that about 25,000 deaths in 2010 were linked
to drinking sugar-sweetened beverages,” said one of the authors with the
Harvard School of Public Health. “Because we focused on deaths due to
chronic diseases, our study focused on adults. Future research should assess
the amount of sugary beverage consumption in children across the world and
how this affects their current and future health.”

Meanwhile, the American Beverage Association (ABA) has responded to these
claims with a March 19 statement highlighting the epidemiological nature of
the research. “This abstract, which is not peer-reviewed nor published in a way
where its methodology can be fully evaluated, is more about sensationalism
than science,” noted ABA. “It does not show that consuming sugar-sweetened
beverages causes chronic disease such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease or
cancer—the real causes of death among the studies subjects. The researchers
make a huge leap when they take beverage intake calculations from around
the globe and allege that those beverages are the cause of deaths which the
authors themselves acknowledge are due to chronic illness.”