If you were looking for proof that Junk Food is associated with cancer… Here it is! And the researchers behind the new study warn, consuming as little as 1 sugary drink a day can put you in the danger zone…
“About 6 percent of U.S. adults report drinking at least one sugar-sweetened beverage each day,” So claims the preamble to an abstract of the study report. That might be soda, coffee or tea, or a fruit drink. Or even a hydrating beverage. But they’re all included in the ‘sugary’ category if they’re sweet-ened with sugar.
And that’s a red flag…
“New research from the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute suggests that this common habit may be associated with a higher risk of gastric cancer,” the preamble adds.
What they did
Researchers examined data from 112,284 participants enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. These long-term studies collected detailed information about parti-cipants’ diets, lifestyles, and health over several decades.
During the follow-up period, which also extended across decades, 278 participants developed gastric cancer.
What they found
Participants who drank at least one serving of a sugar-sweetened beverage each day had a 2.45 times higher risk of developing gastric cancer than participants who consumed less than one serving per month. The association appeared in both women and men. Women were significantly more likely than men to be at increased risk from regular consumption of sugary drinks.
Higher overall fructose consumption (fructose being the main sweetener in these drinks) was also associated with a greater incidence of gastric cancer.
Artificially sweetened beverages, however, were not linked to an increased risk.
The takeaway
“Gastric cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer death worldwide, but we’ve known very little about how diet might contribute to this cancer,” said study senior author Dr Andrew T. Chan, a gastroenterologist and epidemiologist with the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute.
Earlier research has connected sugar-sweetened beverages with higher risks of colorectal, breast, and liver cancers.
My take
The study involved only adults. So there’s no data on whether consumption of sugary drinks in child-hood or during one’s teen years has any connection with gastric cancer risk. Some kids drink a lot of soda. Do they continue to drink a lot of it as they grow older? Does that play any part in their risk of developing cancer later in life?
The researchers caution that the study was observational, meaning it can identify associations but cannot establish that sugar-sweetened beverages directly cause gastric cancer. They say other circ-umstances and factors may also have contributed to the high risk figure. Nevertheless, the assoc-iation is real, and clear…
~ Maggie J.