Want to keep diabetes at bay? Don't think Diet Coke would be of any help. Even two glasses of calorie-free drinks a day could double the risk of developing diabetes.
According to a study, diet drinks can be just as bad for you.
Scientists believe that calorie-free drinks make us feel hungrier, prompting us to reach for sugary food. And they also suspect that artificial sweeteners interfere with the bacteria in our gut – which may trigger diabetes.
The team from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden studied 2,874 adults who had completed a year-long diary about their intake of drinks.
People who drank two or more sweetened drinks a day – whether sugary or artificially sweetened – were 2.4 times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes.
The researchers found for every 200ml of sugary fizzy drink drunk each day, the diabetes risk increased by 21 per cent. The same amount of diet drink consumed every day increased the risk by 18 per cent.
