Many studies have shown that sugared beverages are not healthy, but we’re still consuming them. Maybe new findings on the field are needed to make us think twice when buying a bottle of juice. And they are coming from researchers at the University of California, Davis who assigned 32 overweight men and women to groups consuming either fructose-sweetened or glucose-sweetened drinks over a 10-week period.

 

The drinks were specially made for this study containing only pure fructose or pure glucose.

 

The participants had their age, weight, fasting triglyceride levels, insulin concentrations, total cholesterol and other factors leading to chronic diseases checked. After eight weeks, the researchers found that people who consumed 25 percent of their daily calories as a fructose-sweetened beverage showed increased abdominal and visceral fat, high levels of “bad” cholesterol, and a decreased sensitivity to insulin – all of which suggest a risk of heart disease and diabetes.

 

“The largest sources for daily overconsumption of sugar are soft drinks and other sweetened beverages. Some people drink a 2-liter (67-ounce) bottle of soda a day or even more. If you do that for many years there is no doubt that it will impact your health, no matter what type of sugar is used,” Matthias H. Tschop, MD, obesity researcher at University of Cincinnati, stated.

 

The research appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.