African American Women: Skip the Soda and Fruit Drinks to Avoid Diabetes

Drinking at least two sodas or sweetened beverages daily increased the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 25 to 30%, in a study of African American women who initially had no diabetes. (image from kidshealth.org)

How healthy is it to drink fruit beverages if you're an African American woman who's overweight or has a family history of diabetes type 2?

Not very. If fact, you might want to avoid soda and sweetened beverages, including fruit drinks, altogether.

Drinking at least two sodas or sweetened beverages daily could increase your risk of getting type 2 diabetes by 25 to 30 percent, according to a study by researchers at Boston University and Harvard School of Public Health.

Fruit drinks - which typically are sweetened and contain as many or more calories as soda - are not necessarily a healthy choice, either.

"The public should be made aware that these drinks are not a healthy alternative to soft drinks with regard to risk of type 2 diabetes," said the researchers in their study.

The Archives of Internal Medicine, a journal for medical professionals, published the study on July 28, 2008, of which Julie R. Palmer, ScD, was the principal investigator.

The study is part of a larger one, the Black Women's Health Study, that has been ongoing since 1995 and involves 59,000 African American women from all over the US.

Palmer and her colleagues examined the relationship between sugar-sweetened drinks, weight gain, and diabetes type 2 in the women. None of them had diabetes at the start of the study.

However, 2,713 of them developed type 2 diabetes by the end of the study period.

"Decreasing consumption of sweetened sodas and fruit drinks is a concrete step African American women can take to reduce risk of developing diabetes," Palmer told EthnicNEWz.org in an e-mail.

In general, the link between diabetes and sweetened drinks or soda was stronger for those who drank either beverage more often than the others did.

In addition, diabetes was not the only negative outcome. Weight gain — of a rough average of 16 pounds (7.1 kilos) — was associated with women who increased their consumption of soda.

Interestingly, decreasing soda consumption did not lead to weight loss — it was linked to weight gain of 9 pounds (4.1 kilos) on average.

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Source: EthnicNEWz.org

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