However, Professor Jean-Philippe Drouin-Chartier, who teaches at the pharmacy faculty of the Quebec institution, pointed out that the marketing strategy for these drinks often involves presenting them in the context of physical activity.
"So, it kind of suggests that consuming sugary drinks might not necessarily be harmful to health when you're being physically active," explained Professor Drouin-Chartier. "That's really the hypothesis we wanted to evaluate with our study."
Scientists used two cohorts totaling about 100,000 adults, followed over about thirty years. They found that consuming just two sugary drinks per week was associated with a high risk of cardiovascular diseases — regardless of the level of physical activity undertaken concurrently.
At most, the study specifies, physical activity halved the risk associated with sugary drink consumption.
It was already known that consuming sugary drinks is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, Professor Drouin-Chartier recalled, and the new study "confirms that." It was also known that physical activity had a protective effect against these diseases.
"But when you put the two together, it's interesting to see that in people who consume two or more servings of sugary drinks per week, even if they [...] meet the recommendations of 150 minutes of physical activity per week, the protective effect of physical activity was not enough to completely mitigate the harmful effects of sugary drinks," he summarized.
The researchers highlight that the frequency of consumption studied, that is twice a week, was relatively low; it stands to reason that the risk of cardiovascular disease would be even higher with daily consumption.
It's also reasonable to assume that the percentage of the population meeting the recommendation of 150 minutes of physical activity per week is rather low.
"The message certainly isn't that physical activity is useless," said Professor Drouin-Chartier. "The message is that it's not sufficient to cancel out the effect of sugary drinks."
In the study, consumption of artificially sweetened or "diet" sugary drinks, often presented as an alternative to sugary drinks, was not associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular diseases.
"But water will always be the best drink," the researcher added.
The sugary drinks studied in this research included soft drinks (with or without caffeine), lemonade, and fruit cocktails. Energy drinks were not specifically considered, but they also tend to be sugary.
Sugary drinks constitute the largest source of added sugars in the North American diet, it was reminded in a press release, and their consumption is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular diseases, the main cause of mortality worldwide.