The Associated Press reports that an extra can of soda a day easily causes 15 pounds of weight gain in just a year.
Led by Dr. Frank Hu, the Harvard team examined 40 years of nutrition studies, each of which met strict standards for relevance and scientific method. "We tried to look at the big picture rather than individual studies, and it clearly justifies public health efforts to limit sugar-sweetened beverages," Hu told AP.
Here's an interesting fact from the report: About one-third of all carbohydrate calories in the American diet come from added sweeteners, and beverages account for about half of this amount.
Increased consumption of soft drinks directly mirrors the growing obesity epidemic even though the soft drink industry has fought mightily to say there is no cause-and-effect relationship. That is no different with this study. The American Beverage Association issued a statement saying that the Harvard team ignored some studies that would have discounted such a link. "Blaming one specific product or ingredient as the root cause of obesity defies common sense. Instead, there are many contributing factors, including regular physical activity," according to the group's senior science consultant, Richard Adamson.
That doesn't wash with a lot of experts, including Dr. David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children's Hospital in Boston. He says blaming other factors for obesity misses the point. "Could you imagine somebody saying we should ignore the contribution of hypertension to heart attack because there are many causes? It's ludicrous. Yet this argument resurfaces with regard to obesity," Ludwig told AP. "There's an overwhelmingly strong case to be made for a causal relationship." The report was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
--From the Editors at Netscape
