Study Purportedly Links SSB Consumption to Higher Risk of Death from Cancer

A study led by researchers at the American Cancer Society has purportedly found that people who drank two or more servings of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) per day had a 5% higher risk of death from particular types of cancer than people who never drank SSBs. Marjorie L. McCullough et al., “Sugar- and Artificially-Sweetened Beverages and Cancer Mortality in a Large U.S. Prospective Cohort,” Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, September 15, 2022. The research began in 1982 with 934,777 cancer-free participants, and by 2016, 135,093 participants had died from cancer. The researchers purport to have found an increased risk of death from colorectal and kidney cancers in participants who reported drinking two or more SSBs each day. The study also asserts that it found an association between artificially sweetened beverage consumption and increased risk of pancreatic cancer.