Researchers Find Significant Harmful Links Between Sugar Consumption and 45 diseases, including asthma, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, depression, and certain types of cancer.
Scientists in China and the US recommend cutting down on added sugars to about six teaspoons a day and limiting sugar-sweetened beverages to less than one serving a week. They found significant harmful links between sugar consumption and 45 health outcomes, including asthma, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, depression, certain cancers, and death.
It is widely known that excessive sugar intake can have negative health effects, and this has prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) and others to propose reducing free or added sugars to less than 10% of total daily energy intake. But before a detailed sugar restriction policy can be developed, the quality of the existing evidence needs to be comprehensively assessed.
Therefore, the researchers conducted a comprehensive review to assess the quality of the evidence, potential bias, and validity of all available studies of dietary sugar intake and health outcomes. The review included 73 meta-analyses (67 observational studies and six randomized controlled trials) of 8,601 articles covering 83 health outcomes for adults and children. The researchers assessed the methodological quality of the included articles and rated the evidence for each outcome as high, moderate, low, or very low quality to draw conclusions.
Significant harmful associations were found between dietary sugar intake and 18 endocrine or metabolic diseases, including diabetes, gout and obesity; 10 cardiovascular outcomes including high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke; seven cancer outcomes, including breast, prostate, and pancreatic cancer; and 10 other outcomes, including asthma, tooth decay, depression, and death.
Moderate-quality evidence suggests that consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages was significantly associated with weight gain at the highest versus lowest intake. low, while any sugar intake compared to no sugar was associated with increased fat accumulation in the liver and muscles.