Health scare of the week

Drinking lots of sugar-sweetened drinks and fruit juice may increase your risk for cancer, according to a new French study. Researchers examined nine years’ worth of data from a long-running study in which some 101,000 healthy adults, average age 42, completed numerous surveys about what food and drink they had consumed the previous day. After controlling for risk factors such as family health history and physical activity levels, they found that drinking just 3.4 fluid ounces of sugary beverages a day—about a third of a typical can of soda—was linked with an 18 percent increase in overall cancer risk and a 22 percent higher risk for breast cancer. The increase was the same for fruit juice and sodas; there was no link for artificially sweetened drinks. Study leader Mathilde Touvier cautions that the findings show correlation, not causation. But she says one explanation for the connection may be sugar’s link to obesity. “High sugary drinks consumption is a risk factor for obesity and weight gain,” she tells CNN.com, and “obesity is in itself a risk factor for cancer.”

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