The studies linking sugar to one cancer or another keeps pouring in.
Now, researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden report that if you often eat or drink sweetened foods and drinks, you may increase your risk of developing pancreatic cancer.
The findings, which appeared in the Amercian Journal of Clinical Nutrition, are quite alarming:
- People who drank of fizzy drinks or syrup-based drinks twice a day or more ran a whopping 90% higher risk of getting pancreatic cancer than those who never drank them.
- Participants who added sugar to their food or drinks at least five times a day (think coffee, tea, etc.) ran a 70% greater risk than those who did not.
- And folks who ate creamed fruit (a product that resembles runny jam) at least once a day developed the disease 50% more often than those who never ate the stuff.
Talk about enough to scare you away from sweets.
Thanks to ScienceDaily.com for alerting us to the fact that "pancreatic cancer is a very serious form of cancer that is possibly caused when the pancreas produces heightened levels of insulin as a consequence of upset glucose metabolism." Of course, if you eat a lot of sugar, you’re increasing your insulin production.
Interestingly, the Swedes seem to be quite hip to sugar’s dangers and even to the folly of letting food companies market to kids. In fact, both Sweden and Norway ban advertising to kids under 12.
Jasmin Singer, a fellow graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, helped with this post.