Nutrition experts seek to stem American addiction to sugary drinks

A daily cola habit could add up to 15 extra pounds by the end of one year, according to Walter Willett, Fredrick John Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition and chair of the Department of Nutrition at HSPH. What’s more, strong evidence developed at HSPH and elsewhere shows that sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages are major contributors to the epidemic rise of type 2 diabetes in the United States. In a bid to get Americans’ to give up their addiction to sugary drinks, Willett and colleague Lilian Cheung, nutrition lecturer and editorial director of The Nutrition Source website, are sounding the alarm about their negative health consequences and calling for manufacturers to offer healthier options.

Today, the average American’s diet contains about 300 calories more per day than 30 years ago, Willett told reporters in a teleconference on April 20. About half of this increase can be attributed to sugar-sweetened beverages, mainly sodas, Willett said.

Steven Gortmaker, professor of the practice of health sociology at HSPH, and his colleagues found that on a typical day, four out of five children and two out of three adults drink sugar-sweetened beverages. Teen boys drink more than a quart of sugary drinks, on average, every day. A 12-ounce can of soda or juice typically has 10-12 teaspoons of sugar and 150 or more calories; the popular 20-ounce bottle now prevalent on store shelves and in vending machines carries nearly 17 teaspoons of sugar and 250 calories.

Willett said: “If you can imagine just spooning down 17 teaspoons of sugar, it sort of makes you want to gag. But every day, many adolescent boys in the United States gulp down twice that much, just almost invisibly."

Re-educating the American palate to accept less-sweet drinks is a public health challenge on par with anti-smoking campaigns, Willett said. It will require a concerted effort on multiple fronts: beverage manufacturers need to offer healthier alternatives and provide the calorie counts for an entire can or bottle on the item, rather than a difficult-to-interpret serving size on the back; school and workplace cafeterias should offer healthy beverage choices and smaller sizes of sugary drinks; and consumers, especially parents or food shoppers for the family, should cross off beverages like sodas and fruit punches from their shopping lists. Also, federal food assistance programs, like food stamps, should consider not subsidizing sugary beverages because these undermine health rather than promote it.  

No-calorie water is the best beverage option, Willett said, but switching from a sugary soda may be too drastic a change for some consumers. Few beverage options exist for those who want to cut out some, but not all, of the sugar in their drinks. To fill this gap, Willett and Cheung propose that manufacturers create a class of reduced-calorie beverages that have no more than 1 gram of sugar per ounce – about 70 percent less sugar than the typical soft drink.

“Not that they’re the ideal choice, but for some people who have a hard time going cold turkey this could be a very convenient step down to a better level of sugar intake,” Willett said.

Ideally, these drinks should be made without non-caloric sweeteners such as aspartame, Willett said. Diet drinks with these ingredients are preferable to those made with sugar, but they keep the palate trained to expect sweetness and have unknown weight loss and long-term health effects. Willett also advocates that any drink with more than 50 calories in an eight-ounce serving should carry a warning label that it contributes to the risk of obesity and diabetes.

Cheung stressed that America’s bad beverage habits can be changed if environments are changed to make healthier choices easier. “If the choices are there, it’s just right in front of you, then you’re going to drink healthier,” she said.

For more information, including the chart showing the sugar content of a variety of popular sodas, juices, and energy drinks, visit the Choosing Healthy Drinks website.

--Amy Roeder. Image from NutritionSource.