Less sugar in our drinks, less Type II diabetes?

By 6. May 2015Blog, Health, Risk Management, Taste

Another week another publication on type II diabetes. This time comes the probably-not-so-surprising news that people who consume less drinks containing sugar have less chance of developing type II diabetes.

Reported in the journal Diabetologia, the researchers recorded the consumption of various drinks: soft drinks, juices and tea/coffee, sweetened with sugar, artificial sweetener and unsweetened by more than 25,000 people. The incidences of type II diabetes were recorded over a 10.8 year period.

They found that if you were to reduce one serving of sugar sweetened drink with unsweetened tea/coffee or water then your incidence of type II diabetes could be reduced by 14%–25%.

One thing that did not make sense though, was that drinking artificially sweetened beverages did not reduce the chance of developing type II diabetes.

If the sugar is what is causing the diabetes then why do drinks sweetened with artificial sweetener (and therefore not sugar) not decrease the incidence of diabetes?

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