Sugary Beverages Increase Risk of Cardiovascular Disease

Kimber Stanhope BS, MS, PhD and a team of researchers at the University of California, Davis have just completed a study on how beverages sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup affect the health of those who drink them. They found that the more added sugar the drinks have, the greater the increased risk of cardiovascular disease. This is true even for young and healthy study participants who have only been drinking these beverages for a couple weeks.

UC Davis reports that this “study is the first to demonstrate a direct, dose-dependent relationship between the amount of added sugar consumed in sweetened beverages and increases in specific risk factors for cardiovascular disease.”  The study, which is available online right now for a fee, will be published in the June print-edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Study participants included 85 men and women between the ages of 18 and 40. They were broken into four groups who were given beverages containing different levels of high-fructose corn syrup. One of the groups was given beverages sweetened with the artificial sweetener aspartame instead of sugar or corn-syrup. 

According to the findings of hourly blood-draws at the beginning and end of the study, the higher the sugar content beverages with low-sugar content had statistically significant increased levels over those given sugar free drinks.  Researchers also found that the increased risk was greater for men than for women.

“These findings clearly indicate that humans are acutely sensitive to the harmful effects of excess dietary sugar over a broad range of consumption levels,” concluded Stanhope.

This study’s co-authors, all of whom are affliated with UC Davis and/or the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Western Human Nutrition Research Center at UC Davis, are Valentina Medici, Andrew A. Bremer, Vivien Lee, Hazel D. Lam, Marinelle V. Nunez, Guoxia X. Chen, Nancy L. Keim and Peter J. Havel.

Funding and support for this study was provided by:

• National Institutes of Health through its National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute
• National Center for Research Resources
• Roadmap for Medical Research
• National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
• National Institute of Aging
• U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service