This one is large — involving data from 800,000 people in Japan — and looked at cardiac risk. Researchers found that the more money people spent on carbonated beverages the more likely they were to suffer from heart attacks of cardiac origin outside of a hospital.
The study, presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress, found that spending on other types of beverages — including green tea, black tea, coffee, cocoa, fruit or vegetable juice, fermented milk beverage, milk and mineral water — didn't appear to lead to the same risk.
The battle over sugary drinks has come to a head in recent months with dueling studies and public health messaging campaigns about what soda does to your body.
In March, researchers quantified what diet soda does to your waistline, calculating that those who consumed daily and occasional diet soda were linked to nearly three times as much belly fat as those who didn't consume the drinks. In June, after a study in the journal Circulation by Tufts University researchers estimated that sugary beverages are responsible for 133,000 deaths from diabetes, 45,000 from cardiovascular disease and 6,450 from cancer, many doctors warned that people should cut down on those drinks.
In July, a former pharmacist's graphic representation on a blog of what happens to your body one hour after you drink a can of Coca-Cola went viral -- spurring heated discussion about the accuracy of the analysis and the possible dangers of drinking too much soda.
Coca-Cola has been fighting back through a nonprofit that funds medical research with the message that it's not diet but lack of exercise that is to blame for America's obesity epidemic.
Saku emphasized that in the Japan study the researchers used expenditures on carbonated beverages as a proxy for consumption and that there was no way to determine a causal link. However, he said in a statement, "the findings do indicate that limiting consumption of carbonated beverages could be beneficial for health."
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