It's Time

If you love soft drinks but have switched to diet versions because of health fears, well, put down that diet drink -- now! A new study found that a single can of diet soda a day increases the risk of heart disease by 43 percent and can cause liver damage similar to that seen in alcoholics.

It's obvious that as a nation, we are addicted to soft drinks. Consumption is approaching a quart each day for every man, woman, and child, according to the National Soft Drink Association. And it's taking a tremendous toll on our health. The most obvious effect, in the opinion of many experts, is the soaring rate of obesity.

The latest research, conducted the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Columbia University Medical Center, is only the latest in a long string of studies showing that carbonated soft drinks -- both sugar-sweetened and sugar-free -- are ruining our health.

Health problems linked to soft drinks include:

* Obesity. Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center found that every can or bottle of soft drink a person drinks each day increases their risk of being overweight by 41 percent. Children are at special risk: A British study found that if fructose is present in a child's body, it will cause more cells to mature into belly fat cells when the child's fat cells mature.

High-fructose corn syrup seems to be more at fault for weight gain than regular sugar: Researchers at Princeton University found that rats who were fed high-fructose corn syrup gained 47 percent more weight than rats who were fed an equal number of calories, but without corn syrup. And switching from sugar-sweetened to diet soft drinks doesn't provide protection from weight gain, either. The researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center found that people who drink diet soft drinks don't lose weight; they gain. Their risk of obesity was even higher than those who drank sugary sodas.

* Diabetes. Women who drink one sugary soda a day double their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes when compare with women who drank less than one a month, suggests a study from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. And research from the Framingham Heart Study found that drinking one or more sodas a day, whether regular or diet, increases the risk of metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors which increases the odds of both diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Rutgers researchers point the finger at high-fructose corn syrup, an ingredient in most sugar-sweetened sodas, believing it may initiate a series of events in the body that leads to diabetes.

* Pancreatic cancer: Drinking two or more soft drinks a week almost doubles the risk of developing pancreatic cancer compared to people who do not drink them. Senior author Mark Pereira and colleagues followed 60,524 men and women in the Singapore Chinese Health Study