A Study Of Over 100K People Revealed A Link Between Everyday Beverage Habits & Gastric Cancer Risk
The soda with lunch. The sports drink after a workout. The lemonade that feels like the lighter choice at dinner. These drinks tend to slip by without registering as decisions at all, and when we do question them, we usually think about how they could affect our weight, teeth, or blood sugar.
But recent findings from two of the longest-running health studies in the U.S. suggest that the frequency of these beverages may deserve a second look when it comes to risk of gastric cancer.
About the study
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School examined whether the type of sweetened beverage you drink, sugar-based or artificially sweetened, affects your risk of gastric cancer, and by how much. Gastric cancer has long been linked to risk factors like H. pylori infection, alcohol, and tobacco use, but the role of sugary drinks specifically has not been well established.
To investigate this, the researchers drew on data from over 112,000 participants in the Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study, two long-running research projects that have tracked the diets and health outcomes of nurses and health professionals for decades. Participants regularly report their beverage habits through detailed diet questionnaires, allowing researchers to compare cancer outcomes across different intake levels.
Daily soda drinkers had more than double the risk
People who drank sugar-sweetened beverages, think traditional soda, sports drinks, lemonade, and fruit punch, more than once a day had over double the risk of developing gastric cancer compared with those who rarely drank them. The increased risk showed up in both women and men, though it was somewhat more pronounced in women.
Participants drinking sugar-sweetened beverages one to three times a month, one to three times a week, or even four to seven times a week had gastric cancer rates close to those who almost never drank them. In this data, the risk only climbed in the group drinking them daily.
This isn't the first time sugar-sweetened drinks have turned up as a cancer risk factor. Similar research has found that sugar-sweetened drinks increase the risk of liver cancer as well. Diet shows up elsewhere in cancer research too, including one recent analysis that linked ultra-processed foods to colon cancer in women under 50.
Artificially sweetened beverages, like diet soda, showed no association with gastric cancer risk. Since both categories of drinks are sweet and often carbonated, that split points toward sugar itself as the causing this increased risk, rather than the sweetness or fizz. However, it is worth nothing that research on sugar substitutes has raised other health concerns, so there is no perfect one for one swap when it comes to sweetened beverages.
The fructose connection
The researchers also looked at fructose intake, finding higher intake was tied to higher rates of gastric cancer. Fructose is one of the main sugars found in regular soda and other sweetened drinks (it's part of what makes high-fructose corn syrup, well, high-fructose).
The fact that fructose intake tracked with cancer risk, while artificial sweeteners (which contain no fructose or sugar at all) showed no such link, points at sugar is the more specific problem, rather than sweet-tasting beverages broadly.
This is an observational study, meaning it shows an association rather than proof that sugary drinks (or sugar, more simply) directly cause gastric cancer. The authors note that this is the first study to demonstrate this link, and it holds more weight given the length of the follow-up and size of the cohorts.
Rethinking your daily drink habits
The findings here are really about daily drinkers. A soda at a birthday party or a lemonade on a hot afternoon isn't linked to increased risk in this data, so the first question worth asking yourself is whether these drinks have become a fixture rather than an occasional thing.
If you find yourself reaching for sugar-sweetened beverages everyday, it's worth rethinking your daily habits. Here are a couple of things to think about the next time you head to the fridge:
- Swap one daily soda for sparkling water with a splash of juice or fruit: You still get flavor and fizz, without the added sugar load.
- If you rely on sports drinks post-workout, check whether you actually need the sugar: Unless you're doing prolonged, intense exercise, water is often enough for hydration.
- Notice your "autopilot" drink choices: Think about the can you grab without thinking at lunch, or the fountain drink that comes standard with a meal out. Small, repeated swaps in those moments add up over time.
- If you already drink diet soda instead of regular soda, this research doesn't suggest you need to make a further change on this specific front: Artificially sweetened beverages weren't linked to increased risk here.
If cutting back on sugary drinks feels harder than it should, it may help to look at the bigger picture around cravings. Managing hunger itself can make it easier to reach for sugar-sweetened drinks less often, since cravings for sugar often have less to do with willpower and more to do with what's happening with blood sugar earlier in the day.
The takeaway
Gastric cancer risk usually gets discussed in the past tense, but this study reminds us that the diagnoses people brace for in their sixties take shape from habits they barely register in their thirties. Swapping out your daily beverage for something with less sugar is an action you can take today. Find the drink that shows up most often in your week and think about how you can replace it.