U.N. Says Sugary Drinks Killed 180,000 Worldwide

First the mayor of a major U.S. city tries to ban sugary drinks with preposterous legislation that gets struck down by a court and now a study reveals this earth-shattering news; nearly 200,000 obesity-related deaths worldwide have been linked to sugary drinks.

This sounds more like a headline in the make-believe newspaper that serves a masked, comic-book superhero’s fictitious Gotham City. But it isn’t. This is a real-life study, conducted by a prestigious Ivy League university with figures provided by, none other than the famously corrupt United Nations, which is mostly funded with American taxpayer dollars. .

The U.N.’s health branch, the World Health Organization (WHO), claims that 180,000 obesity-related deaths worldwide are linked to sugary drinks. This includes about 25,000 Americans. Stop the presses! Now it all makes sense; New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was simply trying to save lives when he created a measure to ban oversized sodas, though a judge axed the effort.

It provided great fodder at last week’s Conservative Political Action (CPAC) conference. In fact, the big hit at the annual event near Washington D.C. came when former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin poked fun a Bloomberg by whipping out a Big Gulp filled with soda during her speech. “Oh, Bloomberg’s not around, our Big Gulp’s safe,” Palin said as the crowd roared. She went on: “Shoot, it’s just pop with low-cal ice cubes in it. I hope that’s OK.”

Actually it’s not OK, if you believe the U.S.-funded U.N. figures that are being cited in a report that was recently presented at the American Heart Association scientific conference. This is heavy stuff that will undoubtedly be used by the Obama administration to control consumption. After all, Michelle Obama got Congress to pass a $4.5 billion law to control what Americans eat under the auspice of tackling an obesity epidemic. If sugary drinks really kill tens of thousands then Uncle Sam must intervene!

Of the deaths linked to drinking sugar-sweetened soft drinks, fruit juice or sports beverages, 132,000 were from diabetes, 44 000 from cardiovascular disease and 6,000 from cancer, according to the study. The fact that ¾ of the deaths were related to diabetes “suggests that limiting sugary-beverage intake is an important step in reducing diabetes deaths,” the study says.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the U.N. figures cited in the new report coincide with the First Lady’s rhetoric. It says that two out of three adults and one out of three children in the United States are overweight or obese and that the nation spends an estimated $190 billion a year treating obesity-related health conditions. “Rising consumption of sugary drinks has been a major contributor to the obesity epidemic,” the study says.

The trade group that represents the non-alcoholic beverage industry in the U.S., the American Beverage Association (ABA), fired back saying the report is “more about sensationalism than science.” Linking sugar-sweetened beverages to chronic diseases like diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease is wrong because the facts don’t support it, the group points out. “The researchers make a huge leap when they take beverage intake calculations from around the globe and allege that those beverages are the cause of deaths which the authors themselves acknowledge are due to chronic disease.”