Drinking fizzy drinks can ‘significantly reduce your life expectancy’ says new WHO study

Love an ice cold glass of something fizzy the end of a long day?

You might want to rethink that. According to a new study by the World Health Organisation (WHO), people who regularly drink sugar-sweetened and articifically-sweetened fizzy drinks are at risk of an early death. Yep, it's true. Over-consumption of fizzy drinks can reduce a person’s life expectancy by a 'significant amount' says the WHO, confirming what many had suspected already. As part of the 16-year study, which was published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal, researchers at the WHO surveyed over 450,000 people in ten countries trying to determine if there was any link between the consumption of fizzy drinks and mortality. If you are a lover of these types of drinks, these results will no doubt alarm you. Scary results Because sure, we have know for years how bad sugar is for our health, but as this new study proves, consuming artifical sweetners, which diet fizzy drinks are filled with, is just as bad – if not worse.

“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.