New Evidence That Sugar Is Harming Our Hearts

If the torrent of studies suggesting that sugar is bad for our health wasn’t quite enough, new research again suggests that added dietary sugar increases the risk of death from heart disease. Among the health concerns of eating or drinking too much sugar have been a higher risk of obesity, high blood pressure, dementia, type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia (a bad assortment of blood fats), cirrhosis of the liver, and, of course, cardiovascular disease. And from the new study, which looked at sugar intake and the health of men and women over about 15 years, a clear trend emerged: The more added sugar a person consumed, the greater his or her risk of dying from heart disease.

Researchers from the CDC looked at data from 31,000 people who’d taken part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, comparing a multitude of different lifestyle and physical variables to health outcomes.

The good news is that sugar consumption has decreased a bit over the years. The percentage of calories we get from added sugar decreased from 16.8% in 1999-2004 to 14.9% in the years 2005-2010.