Drinking Soda Daily Leads to Belly Fat

According to a research published in the Circulation journal, drinking soda daily leads to belly fat in time. The abdominal fat can deposit over the pancreas and liver and can affect some hormones, like the insulin. When the insulin hormones stop working properly, the risk of developing heart disease and type 2 diabetes increase.

The lead author of the study, Doctor Caroline S. Fox said that while previous studies only studied the link between sodas and obesity, this study focused on the fat distribution caused by drinking sweetened beverages daily. Fox is at the moment a volunteer at the National Institutes of Health.

The study revealed that while most people tended to gain abdominal fat in time, the people who drank beverages daily gained even more fat. For the study, data from 1,000 volunteers was collected. The participants in the Framingham Heart Study answered questions related to food and beverages frequency. Most of the people said that they drank a mix of diet soda and sweetened beverages. 13% of them drank sweetened beverages daily, 35% drank them frequently, 20% occasionally and one third claimed that they never consume sodas.

At the beginning of the study, the volunteers underwent a tomography and their abdominal fat tissue was measured. Another tomography was done six year later in order to see what changes occurred. After six years, the people who drank daily sodas had a 852 cubic centimeters increased belly fat while the people who didn’t drink soda at all had a 658 cubic centimeters increase. That equals a 1.8 pounds increase for the daily consumers.

Even though that might seem like a small difference, Fox said that it is enough to enhance the diabetes and heart disease risk. This study doesn’t show if the decrease of sweetened beverages would result in a decrease belly fat though.

According to the American Heart Association, 100 calories of added sugars is recommended for women and 150 for men, on a daily basis. If a person drinks 1 12 ounce sweetened beverage, that amount is surpassed, according to Jane Welsh from the Emory University. She said that the healthiest beverages are milk and water. She recommends diet soda for the people who want to reduce their sugar intake.

According to CDC, males consume more soda than women and the age group that consumes the most sweetened beverages consists of teenagers and young adults. Also, the people with low incomes consume more sodas than the people with higher incomes. The consumption of sugar drinks has majorly increased in the last years in the United States. Drinking soda daily leads to belly fat, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and even obesity.

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