Adding sugar to coffee, tea may not significantly impact health
A longitudinal study found no association between sweetening coffee or tea and a heightened risk of diabetes and all-cause mortality. Image credit: Trent Lanz/Stocksy.
Source : Medical News Today | Author : Erika Watts
Researchers from Denmark and the Netherlands analyzed data from the longitudinal Copenhagen Male Study to see whether adding sugar to coffee or tea could impact health outcomes.
They looked at the incidence of diabetes, deaths caused by heart disease or cancer, and all-cause mortality.
The researchers found that adding sugar to coffee or tea did not pose additional health risks to a significant extent.
An excess of sugar in a person’s diet can lead to health issues, including tooth decayTrusted Source, obesityTrusted Source, and heart diseaseTrusted Source.
The American Heart AssociationTrusted Source recommends no more than 9 teaspoons of added sugar for men and 6 teaspoons of added sugar for women per day, but many people often exceed that.
With one can of soda containing more than the recommended maximum daily sugar intake for both men and women, it is easy to exceed those recommendations.
Recently, a team of researchers from institutions in Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, wondered if adding sugar to one’s daily cup of coffee or tea is as harmful to health as commonly assumed.
Analyzing data from the Copenhagen Male Study, the scientists did not find an increased risk of all-cause mortality, diabetes, or deaths attributed to cancer or heart disease in men who added sugar to coffee or tea.
The study findings appear in PLOS ONETrusted Source.
Whittling down the participant pool
The Copenhagen Male Study began during the 1970s and focused on Danish men ages 40-59 when the study began.
Part of the initial workup included assessing the men’s heart and lung health, plus getting the men to complete questionnaires about their lifestyles.
During one of the follow-up appointments, doctors measured the participants’ blood pressure, height, and weight. One of the questionnaires the participants completed at this time asked about their coffee and tea intake, and whether they added sugar to these drinks.
Of the data available for the Copenhagen Male Study, the researchers in the new study analyzed data from 2,923 men who met the parameters for inclusion.
All men included had no prior history of heart disease, cancer, or type 2 diabetes when they joined the study. Additionally, the researchers only included men who indicated drinking coffee or tea.
The researchers had access to the medical records, either for living men or those deceased, for 99% of the participants.
When the scientists began their analysis, they divided the participants into the sugar and non-sugar groups and calculated the risk for all-cause mortality, cancer deaths, heart disease deaths, and type 2 diabetes for each group.
Small amounts of added sugar likely safe
The researchers did not ask participants how much sugar they added to their coffee or tea, but assumed that it was a small amount. Overall, they did not find a significant risk for health issues in people in the sugar group versus the “no sugar” group.
The sugar group’s death rate was 89.9%, and the “no sugar” group’s death rate was 87.5%. Over time, there was no statistically significant association between the use of sugar in coffee and tea and all-cause mortality.
In terms of heart disease mortality, the sugar group also had a slightly higher — but comparable — rate. The sugar group’s rate was 38.2% while the “no sugar” group’s rate was 35.3%.
When the researchers looked at the incidence of type 2 diabetes, they noted the “no sugar” group had a slightly higher rate of developing the disease than the sugar group. Again, there was no statistical difference for the association between the two groups over time.
The sugar group 8.1% rate of developing diabetes was comparable to the “no sugar” group, which had a 9.9% rate.
“Important findings of this study were that, when correcting for important confounders, there was no statistically significant association between the use of sugar in coffee and tea and all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, cancer mortality or incident diabetes mellitus,” write the authors.
