The first rule of analyzing any self-reporting nutritional study is to take it with the biggest grain of salt you can find. And then once you've done that, read the article, and make sure it is claiming what the news is reporting:
Sounds serious! So what is the highest level of diet drink usage they studied? From the materials and methods section:
Anyone want to guess why they collapsed the 2-3, 4-5, and >6 drinks/day into one category? I'd bet money that they didn't find a significant increase in morbidity/mortality in the 2-5 drink/day users, so they included the >6/day to get positive results. So basically, those that report heavy drinking of soft drinks have a somewhat higher risk of cardiovascular disease than those that drink rarely. That says nothing of those that might be drinking 1-2 soft drinks a day. So for those of you freaks who actually like the taste of diet Mountain Dew, go ahead and raise that can of piss regularly but responsibly. You've probably got worse things to think about.
Look, they had a ton of people in this study (~90,000) and had some interesting results. There may be something there wrt soft drinks. But if you were to be skeptical of every self-reporting nutritional study right off the bat, you would be right much more often than not.
The companion editorial to this study is also worth reading:
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1...AHA.119.024456
In multivariate analyses, those consuming the highest level of ASB compared to never or rarely (<1/wk) had significantly greater likelihood of all end points (except hemorrhagic stroke), after controlling for multiple covariates.
Frequency was described in 9 categories: never or less than once per month (reference), 1 to 3 per month, 1 per week, 2 to 4 per week, 5 to 6 per week, 1 per day, 2 to 3 per day, 4 to 5 per day, ≥6 per day. These categories were collapsed for analysis to 4 categories: never or less than once per week, 1 to 4 times a week, 5 to 7 times a week, and ≥2 times a day.
Look, they had a ton of people in this study (~90,000) and had some interesting results. There may be something there wrt soft drinks. But if you were to be skeptical of every self-reporting nutritional study right off the bat, you would be right much more often than not.
The companion editorial to this study is also worth reading:
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1...AHA.119.024456
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