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13th October 2019
07:00am BST

“The take home message is drink water – certainly avoid sugar sweetened beverages and be cautious about artificially sweetened beverages," explains Professor Mitchell Elkind, a stroke expert and president elect of the American Heart Association.
"Water is the safest thing. Tea and coffee are OK. But minimise or completely eliminate processed beverages.” In fact, according to the study, consuming two or more glasses of fizzy drinks a day can reduce a person’s life expectancy by eight percent. And, if you think you are doing the right thing by opting for diet drinks instead, you could not be more wrong – the risk of early death is 26 percent higher for people who consume drinks sweetened with artificial sweeteners. "We found that higher soft drink intake was associated with a greater risk of death from any cause regardless of whether sugar-sweetened or artificially sweetened drinks were consumed," said study senior author Neil Murphy. He's a scientist with the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France. "Our results for sugar-sweetened soft drinks provide further support to limit consumption and to replace them with healthier beverages, preferably water," Murphy said.Explore more on these topics: