Drinking three cans of soda a day can have negative effects on your health due to toxicity levels in sugar, according to the University of Utah news release.
Researchers published the study online in the journal Nature Communications. The findings show a diet of 25 percent extra sugar in mice caused "females [to die] at twice the normal rate and males were a quarter less likely to hold territory and reproduce."
Previous studies have fed mice large doses of sugar disproportionate to the amount people consume on a daily basis. Unlike the former studies, researchers at the University focused on what humans realistically consume.
"Our results provide evidence that added sugar consumed at concentrations currently considered safe exerts dramatic adverse impacts on mammalian health," said University of Utah biology professor Wayne Potts, the study's senior author.
Researchers further explained their findings in the news release:
The new toxicity test placed groups of mice in room-sized pens nicknamed "mouse barns" with multiple nest boxes - a much more realistic environment than small cages, allowing the mice to compete more naturally for mates and desirable territories, and thereby revealing subtle toxic effects on their performance.
"The experimental diet in the study provided 25 percent of calories from added sugar - half fructose and half glucose - no matter how many calories the mice ate," the University said. "Both high-fructose corn syrup and table sugar (sucrose) are half fructose and half glucose."
The amount of sugar in the mice's diet was based on National Research Council recommendation that humans should consume no more than 25 percent of calories from "added sugar." The recommendation does not include natural sugars found in foods such as fruits, but rather processed items only.
"I have reduced refined sugar intake and encouraged my family to do the same," Potts said, 'noting that the new test showed that the 25 percent "added-sugar" diet - 12.5 percent dextrose (the industrial name for glucose) and 12.5 percent fructose - was just as harmful to the health of mice as being the inbred offspring of first cousins."
Want to lean more about the study? Click here to read the full news release.
