Eliminating this from your diet is more important than what you eat for weight loss.
What you drink could have a higher impact on your weight loss than what you eat, a study suggests.
Cutting down the amount of calories consumed from liquids has a stronger effect on losing weight than reducing calories from solid foods.
Researchers looked at the effect of sugar-sweetened drinks and weight change in adults and found that limiting liquid calories will lead to weight loss and stops the regaining of weight.
Previous studies have found that consuming sugar-sweetened beverages could result in excessive weight gain and increase the risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Sugar-sweetened beverages are drinks with added sugars such as sweet alcoholic drinks (liqueurs), energy drinks, sports drinks, fruit drinks, coffee drinks, sweetened tea, sweetened milk, soft drinks and soda.
Professor Benjamin Caballero, , study co-author, said:
“Both liquid and solid calories were associated with weight change, however, only a reduction in liquid calorie intake was shown to significantly affect weight loss during the 6-month follow up.
A reduction in liquid calorie intake was associated with a weight loss of 0.25 kg at 6 months and 0.24 kg at 18 months.
Among sugar-sweetened beverages, a reduction of 1 serving was associated with a weight loss of 0.5 kg at 6 months and 0.7 kg at 18 months.
Of the seven types of beverages examined, sugar-sweetened beverages were the only beverages significantly associated with weight change.”
In this study, based on their nutritional and calorie contents, drinks were divided into different classes:
- Sugar-sweetened beverages including regular soft drinks, high-calorie beverages sweetened with sugar, fruit punch, and fruit drinks.
- 100 percent juice including fruit and vegetable juice.
- Diet drinks including diet soda and other diet drinks sweetened with artificial sweeteners.
- Milk including skimmed milk, 1 percent low-fat milk, 2 percent reduced-fat milk, and whole milk.
- Tea and coffee with sugar.
- Alcoholic drinks.
- Coffee and tea with no sugar.
Their results showed that nearly 40 percent of sugar-sweetened beverages were the main source of liquid calories.
Dr Liwei Chen, the study’s first author, said:
“Among beverages, sugar-sweetened beverages was the only beverage type significantly associated with weight change at both the 6- and 18-month follow up periods.
Changes in the consumption of diet drinks and alcoholic beverages were inversely associated with weight loss, but were not statistically significant.
Our study supports policy recommendations and public health efforts to reduce intakes of liquid calories, particularly from sugar-sweetened beverages, in the general population.”
The study was published in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Chen et al., 2009).
