Not all fat is created equal, and there’s fresh evidence that sugar-sweetened drinks make the body build up the worst kind of fat for your metabolism.
Frankie Ifop – As a Biochemist, I had to make sure I have all the health guides, so I stumbled upon this useful information and I’d like to share it out.
From a health perspective, sugar-sweetened beverages don’t help the body. The very thing that makes sugary sodas, sports drinks and lemonade taste so sweet can lead to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other metabolic abnormalities.
In a study published in the American Heart Association journalCirculation, researchers provide the strongest evidence yet that sugared drinks can lead to the accumulation of unhealthy visceral fat over time.
Visceral fat differs from the kind of fat that most of us are familiar with that builds up just underneath the skin. Visceral fat emerges deep within organs; it’s embedded in the liver, pancreas and intestines. Unlike other types of fat, it tends to be more metabolically active, meaning it releases compounds that can disrupt the body’s ability to efficiently break down sugar from food and use it for energy, as well as boost production of cholesterol in the liver.
Previous studies have connected sugar-sweetened drinks with higher levels of visceral fat, but those only included one-time measurements of fat levels where researchers linked how much people’s self-reports of drinking sugary beverages to their visceral fat volume.
The scientists also showed that the visceral fat was biologically more likely to cause health problems. The people who drank sweet things also regularly also showed lower quality fat, which has been linked to greater metabolic abnormalities and problems such as insulin resistance, a contributor to diabetes.