That's how harmful soft drinks are

Lisa Vogel studied departmental journalism with a focus on medicine and biosciences at Ansbach University and deepened her journalistic knowledge in the master's degree in multimedia information and communication. This was followed by a traineeship in the editorial team. Since September 2020 she has been writing as a freelance journalist for

More posts by Lisa Vogel All content is checked by medical journalists.

Regularly drinking sweet drinks not only makes you fat, but also increases your risk of premature death. Sugar and sweetener have different effects - but they both make you sick.

Unhealthy fattening foods

Soft drinks have long been considered unhealthy. They increase the calorie intake without filling you up and are thus a contributory cause of obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus. A European study has now looked at other health effects of sweetened drinks.

Scientists evaluated the data from over 450,000 people from ten European countries. The average age of the participants was 51 years. The researchers followed them for over 19 years and asked questions about their lifestyle and eating habits.

Two soft drinks a day increase the risk of illness

It came out: Participants who were healthy at the start of the study who consumed more than two glasses (250 milliliters) of any kind of soft drink each day had an eight percent higher risk of dying from an illness than participants who had less than one sweetened drink per month consumed.

The researchers included soft drinks such as lemonade, cola, juices and energy drinks - regardless of whether they had been sweetened with sugar or sweetener.

Sugar harms the intestines, sweeteners go to the heart

Both sugary soft drinks and drinks sweetened with sugar substitutes increased the risk of illness - but for different diseases. Soft drinks sweetened with sweeteners increased the risk of cardiovascular diseases in particular.

Drinks with sugar, on the other hand, seem to favor gastrointestinal disorders in particular. This study could not establish a connection between sweet drinks and cancer.

One in four drinks Cola and Co.

Sugary drinks are still popular with Germans. A study by Techniker Krankenkasse found that 26 percent of 18 to 39 year olds drink sweetened thirst quenchers daily or several times a week. Men in particular like to use Coke and Co., 21 percent even regularly. This is only about one in ten women.

The proportion is even higher among students: 28 percent of male students regularly drink soft drinks. It is only ten percent of the women.

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