Studies expand on soda's role in growing obesity

As public health leaders step up their efforts to temper Americans' thirst for sugar-sweetened beverages, a new set of published studies has found that removing sugary drinks from kids' diets slows weight gain in heavy teens and reduces the odds that normal-weight children will become obese.

Though sodas, sports drinks, blended coffees and other high-calorie beverages have long been assumed to play a leading role in the nation's obesity crisis, these studies are the first to show that consumption of sugary drinks is a direct cause of weight gain, experts said.

For adults, the new research offers the disturbing suggestion that regular consumption of the high-calorie beverages may turn on genetic switches that incline our bodies to becoming fat.

Collectively, the studies leave little doubt that a steady surge in the consumption of soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks has contributed to the near-tripling of the nation's obesity rate over the last four decades.

"Calories from sugar-sweetened beverages do matter," Yale University endocrinologist Sonia Caprio wrote in an editorial that accompanied the studies, published online Friday by the New England Journal of Medicine. "The time has come to take action."

Admonishing purveyors of crowd-pleasing super-sized drinks, Caprio also urged policymakers to focus first on measures that "limit consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, especially those served at low cost and in excessive portions, to attempt to reverse the increase in childhood obesity."

More than 12.5 million American kids and 78 million adults are obese. The 40 years of increasing national girth have paralleled an estimated doubling of calories consumed in drinks sweetened with sugar and its close chemical relative, high-fructose corn syrup.

As public health officials have pondered ways to reduce obesity and the chronic diseases that come with it, they have sharpened their focus on the estimated 222 calories the average American drinks every day in the form of sugary drinks and the like.

"Sugar-sweetened beverages — and ultimately all sugary beverages including juices — are the low-hanging fruit" of the anti-obesity campaign, said University of North Carolina epidemiologist Barry M. Popkin, an obesity expert who tracks American consumption patterns. While sugary drinks are high in calories, they are low in nutrients, he said. What's more, studies show that people who drink such beverages rarely compensate for their extra calories by reducing intake at meals.

Not surprisingly, the new studies unleashed a storm of objection from the Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc., the icons of a $110-billion-a-year industry whose products have penetrated the remotest corners of the earth.

"Sugar-sweetened beverages are not driving obesity," the American Beverage Assn., which represents the soda makers, said in a statement released Friday. "By every measure, sugar-sweetened beverages play a small and declining role in the American diet." Citing an analysis of government data by the National Cancer Institute, the ABA said sugar-sweetened drinks accounted for just 7% of the average American's diet. "Focusing on a small source of calories rather than on the total diet is a misplaced allocation of resources," the ABA statement cautioned.