Research

Hormonal

Increased population-level sugar availability is independently associated with higher type 2 diabetes prevalence, regardless of obesity rates, physical activity, or total caloric intake.

At a population level, higher availability of added sugars correlates with higher diabetes rates, independent of how much people weigh or exercise. While this doesn't mean one soda causes diabetes in one person, reducing sugar availability in communities may help lower overall diabetes prevalence.

ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
every 150 kcal/person/day increase in sugar availability (about one can of soda/day) was associated with increased diabetes prevalence by 1.1% (p ,0.001) after testing for potential selection biases and controlling for other food types (including fibers, meats, fruits, oils, cereals), total calories, overweight and obesity, period-effects, and several socioeconomic variables such as aging, urbanization and income.
Sanjay Basu et al. · PLoS ONE · 2013

Why this rating

The study is an ecological econometric analysis of cross-sectional data, which establishes correlation and temporal precedence but cannot prove individual-level causation or rule out all unmeasured confounders.

Source

The Relationship of Sugar to Population-Level Diabetes Prevalence: An Econometric Analysis of Repeated Cross-Sectional Data

Sanjay Basu et al. · PLoS ONE · 2013

DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0057873

cross_sectional · n=175Cited 431×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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