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Having a soda with a meal has become a normal part of the day for many people, like having coffee with breakfast. But a new study looks at how sodas and other sugary drinks are contributing to poor health around the world. NPR's Rachel Carlson reports.
RACHEL CARLSON, BYLINE: The new study in Nature Medicine estimates sugary drinks contributed to over 3 million new cases of diabetes and heart disease combined in 2020.
DARIUSH MOZAFFARIAN: That's a lot of suffering, and I think our results really highlight this is not a small deal.
CARLSON: Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian directs the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. He and his team found that in Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, sugary drinks like sodas and energy drinks also contributed to nearly a quarter of all new diabetes cases. But Dr. Mozaffarian says they saw the biggest increases in sub-Saharan Africa over the last few decades.
MOZAFFARIAN: This is not just, oh, no big deal. You know, let's just have a few sodas here and there. I think it's very important to take care of this problem globally.
CARLSON: But researchers say that in the last few decades, consumption of sugary drinks has become integrated into people's daily lives, especially in some countries among those with higher levels of education and in urban areas. Laura Lara-Castor is a study author and postdoc at University of Washington. She says in many communities, sugary drinks like soda are seen as a sign of status.
LAURA LARA-CASTOR: This is the - kind of like selling the American dream in a way.
CARLSON: Some researchers have seen this firsthand. Richmond Aryeetey is a public health nutritionist in Ghana, and he says he's noticed more sugary drinks now than when he was growing up.
RICHMOND ARYEETEY: You are likely to see soda in the house on festive occasions. These days, it's ubiquitous in the sense that it is in almost every experience they have. At school, there is advertising - on TV, on video games and on billboards. So it's, like, in your face everywhere.
CARLSON: He sees this change as a combination of marketing and the greater availability of processed foods.
ARYEETEY: It's like a perfect storm gathering.
CARLSON: The paper does have some limitations. Dr. Frank Hu is a public health researcher with Harvard but didn't work on the study. He says this work, like a lot of nutritional studies, relies on self-reporting, which could mean the data underestimates the size of the problem. But Dr. Hu and the study authors all say the work underscores the urgent need for policies to reduce people's intake of sugar across the globe.
Rachel Carlson, NPR News.
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