Contents tagged with weight of the nation

  • The sour side of sugary drinks and what family physicians can do about obesity

    Tags: obesity, sugar-sweetened beverages, family physician, weight of the nation, weight loss

    Tuesday, September 25, 2012 2:21:00 PM
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    Regularly drinking sugar-sweetened beverages like soda and sports drinks will make you fat.

    By now this is an old message, but it gains more ground with each new article, study, or documentary released about the American obesity epidemic. The latest research comes from three studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Two of the studies found that drinking noncaloric drinks could lower children’s weight gain, and the third study found that people with a genetic predisposition for weight gain were twice as likely to gain weight if they drank sugary beverages compared to people who did not drink these beverages.

    One of the studies’ authors, Dr. David Ludwig from Boston Children’s Hospital, told Reuters Health, “I know of no other category of food whose elimination can produce weight loss in such a short period of time. The most effective single target for an intervention aimed at reducing obesity is sugary beverages.”

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