BOTH sweet (sugar) drinks AND artificial lead to diabetes in those subject
to diabetes AND MANY other diseases..  The ONE exception Stevia.

Sweet fruit drinks found to lead to diabetes
Mon Jul 28, 4:13 PM ET

Sweetened fruit drinks are often marketed as a healthier alternative
to non-diet soft drinks but are just as likely to cause weight gain
and increase the risk of diabetes, researchers said on Monday.

"The public should be made aware that these drinks are not a healthy
alternative to soft drinks with regard to risk of type 2 diabetes,"
Julie Palmer and colleagues at Boston University wrote in their
report, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, is closely
linked to obesity and has become more common worldwide.

The findings came from a look at nearly 44,000 black women in the
United States who were checked from 1995 through 2005.

Those who said they drank two or more non-diet soft drinks a day had a
24 percent increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes than those in
the study who drank fewer than one regular soft drink per month, the
research team said.

Women who drank two or more sweetened fruit drinks per day had a 31
percent increased risk compared to those who drank fewer than one such
fruit drink a month. Diet soft drinks, grapefruit juice and orange
juice were not linked to a higher diabetes risk, the researchers said.

While pure orange and grapefruit juices also contain sugars naturally,
they may have a different metabolic effect or may be more likely to be
consumed as part of a meal, the investigators said.

Soft drinks and sweetened juices are often consumed between meals and
may lead to snacking, they said.

An earlier study involving thousands of white women also linked
diabetes to both soft drinks and sweetened juices, the report said.

Another study in the same journal found that eating fruits and
vegetables seems to ward off type 2 diabetes, perhaps by preventing
obesity or providing protective nutrients, including antioxidants.

A third study found that a low-fat diet does not seem to change the
risk of diabetes.

"The common denominator that appears clear is that calories trump
everything," Dr. Mark Feinglos of the Duke University Medical Center
in North Carolina wrote in a commentary in the same issue. "And
certain nutrients, like high fructose corn syrup, make it easier to
overeat," he added.

"If you keep the calories low, you can probably eat almost anything,
which is what the low-carb diets show us. Specific metabolic issues
aside, an important reason that low carb works is because you don't
eat a lot of calories."

(Reporting by Michael Conlon; Editing by Maggie Fox and Bill Trott)

Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited.
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