Research

Mixed

Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is estimated to be responsible for 8.7% of type 2 diabetes cases in the US and 3.6% in the UK over a 10-year period, assuming causality.

On a population level, reducing sugar-sweetened beverage consumption could prevent a significant number of new diabetes cases in the US and UK. Public health policies targeting SSBs are supported by this evidence.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Under specified assumptions for population attributable fraction... 1.8 million would be attributable to consumption of sugar sweetened beverages (population attributable fraction 8.7%...); and of 2.6 million events in the UK... 79 000 would be attributable to consumption of sugar sweetened beverages (population attributable fraction 3.6%)
Fumiaki Imamura et al. · BMJ · 2015

Why this rating

Based on robust meta-analysis data applied to national survey data, though dependent on the assumption of causality.

Source

Consumption of sugar sweetened beverages, artificially sweetened beverages, and fruit juice and incidence of type 2 diabetes: systematic review, meta-analysis, and estimation of population attributable fraction

Fumiaki Imamura et al. · BMJ · 2015

DOI 10.1136/bmj.h3576

Meta-analysis · 17 studiesCited 981×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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