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November 5 2012

Another Misleading Soda Study

Julie Gunlock

Another misleading study is making headlines today. Huffpo reports:

Yet another study is linking regular consumption of sugary drinks with risk of stroke.

The newest finding, first reported by Reuters and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, shows that women who said they drank the most soft drinks in the study had an 83 percent higher risk of ischemic stroke than those who reported drinking the fewest soft drinks.

Earlier this year, a study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine showed a link between drinking a diet soda every day and higher stroke and heart attack risk.

"It makes sense, if [sugar sweetened beverages] increase the risk for obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, inflammation, then it should, in fact, raise the risk for cardiovascular disease, and that's what we're seeing," Cleveland Clinic's Adam Bernstein, who was not involved in the study, told Reuters.

The study included 39,786 men and women in Japan between the ages of 40 and 59, who were tracked between 1990 and 2008. They filled out a questionnaire asking them about their soft drink consumption.

By the end of the study period, 453 people had ischemic heart disease and 1,922 people had had a stroke (1,047 of which were ischemic, the other 859 were hemorrhagic).

Researchers found that women who had drank the most soda in the study -- Reuters reported that this was nearly a soda a day -- had a higher risk of ischemic stroke than those who drank the least soda in the study. However, researchers didn't find a risk between soda consumption and ischemic heart disease, or hemorrhagic stroke for either men or women.

So, the women who drank the most soda, had a higher risk of stroke. Notice that the study only tracked their soda consumption, not say...their Twinkie or Ho Ho consumption habits. It failed to track their pizza consumption habits or their gigantic bowl of spaghetti habits. Strangely, study participants weren't asked if they were using that soda to wash down a gallon of cookies and cream ice cream.

It's a pretty good guess that these folks aren't developing a stroke risk because of soda alone.  Chances are, their problems with, as "researcher" Adam Bernstein notes, obesity and diabetes and inflammation is more complicated than one singular item in their diets. Maybe Mr. Bernstein could take a moment to research the list of other contributors to obesity, like FOOD, oh and getting too little exercise, and of course age, and gender and race and the multiple other things that can't be controlled by government regulation.




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