Sweet Love

We delayed telling you this for as long as we could. We verified and then verified our verification all because the news is not good. You've heard and maybe read about it online and we hoped we'd hear something back on the other side to ignore this information to no avail.

The news isn't good so we might as well face it. Everything sweet is bad for you. Two studies by two different research teams on two (2) coast from fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to artificially sweetened drinks of any variety increases your risk of high blood pressure or " kidney function decline." Drink more than two (2) and you're going to pay medically. No if and or buts about it.

From the UK (Snack and soft drink sweetener putting millions at risk of high blood pressure) to the US:

"There are currently limited data on the role of diet in kidney disease," researcher Dr. Julie Lin, of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said in a news release. "While more study is needed, our research suggests that higher sodium and artificially sweetened soda intake are associated with greater rate of decline in kidney function."

The first study looked at diet and kidney function decline in more than 3,000 women enrolled in the national Nurses' Health Study. The researchers found that:

"in women with well-preserved kidney function, higher dietary sodium intake was associated with greater kidney function decline, which is consistent with experimental animal data that high sodium intake promotes progressive kidney disease."

The second study looked at the association between sugar- and artificially-sweetened beverages and kidney function decline in the same group of women. The researchers found an association between two or more servings per day of artificially sweetened soda and a two-fold increased risk of faster kidney function decline. There was no connection between sugar-sweetened beverages and kidney function decline.

The association between artificially sweetened beverages and kidney function decline persisted after Lin and colleague Dr. Gary Curhan accounted for other factors, such as age, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, physical activity, caloric intake and cardiovascular disease.

Further study is needed to better understand how artificial sweeteners influence kidney function decline, the researchers said.

Our problem with the report was that the press release was the actually ABC News story rather than the other way around. So we immediately sought one of the researchers while contacting all of the usual suspect (American Beverage Association).
They had little (read nothing to say to us) to say on their website. The information they had was old and outdated.

The fact is that the compendium of science, regardless of funding source, does not show that soft drinks or other sweetened beverages uniquely contribute to obesity - nor, for that matter, that they are uniquely linked to any negative health consequences. In fact, the authors fail to cite a study funded by the Canadian government that examined a sample size of more than 137,000 school-aged children in 34 countries - a sample size larger than the combined total of the studies that were cited by these researchers - and found no association between soft drink intake and body mass index. Furthermore, a study funded by the National Institutes of Health and published earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine supported that all calories count - and that balancing calories consumed from all foods and beverages with the calories burned through physical activity is what matters.

What we did find was quotes from WedMD:

Asked to review the study findings, Maureen Storey, senior vice president of science policy for the American Beverage Association, says in a prepared statement: "It's important to remember that this is an abstract presented at an annual meeting." She notes that the research needs further scrutiny by researchers.

She acknowledges that kidney disease is serious but that diabetes and high blood pressure account for the majority of kidney disease cases, ''not consumption of diet soda."

We thought the research was presented in a way that made us suspicious which is why we made direct contact with one of the researchers hoping for a copy of the original press release. Instead what we got was an interchange that didn't reassure us at all.

We studied all sugar-sweetened beverages, sugary sodas, and diet sodas in our investigation so I cannot speak to the applicability of the drinks you mentioned below. We found an association between faster kidney function decline and >=2 servings of artificially sweetened sodas per day but not with other beverages. - Dr. Julie Lin

The abstract that's not online said:

We identified 3256 women participating in the Nurses' Health Study who had had data on sugar sweetened beverage (SSB) or artificially sweetened soda intake and (epidermal growth factor receptor) eGFR change between 1989 and 2000. SSB included soda, fruit juices, punch, and iced tea. This group included 730 diabetic women participating in a sub-study of kidney function. Cumulative average beverage intake was derived from the 1984, 1986, and 1990 food frequency questionnaires.

Median age was 67 years, 97% were Caucasian, 54% had HTN, 24% were diabetic, and median eGFR was 85 ml/min/1.73 m2 at baseline in 1989.

Consumption of > 2 servings per day of artificially sweetened soda is associated with a two-fold increased risk for kidney function decline.

We're holding on to the hope of Splenda. Though it really isn't sweet enough for some of us. Some of us only have less than two (2) a day but other of us drink like it's going out of style. Yes, we know about the "rat" study but that was thrown out of court and it's from the Sugar Association against Splenda. Listen we need something sweet since every dentist in the world speaks against the ills of sugar (and we really don't like dentist! - Do you?).