Soft drinks could make you age prematurely by damaging your cells, according to a study by the University of California-San Francisco.
The researchers found people who drank more sugary sodas tended to have a problem in their cells: shorter telomeres.
Telomeres are the protective units of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes in cells.
They found that shorter telomeres make it more difficult for cells to regenerate, so the body ages and can be more susceptible to diseases.
The telomeres were shorter in the participants who reported drinking more soda.
"This is the first demonstration that soda is associated with telomere shortness," Elissa Epel, Ph.D, said. Epel is a professor of psychiatry at UCSF and a senior author of the study.
"This finding held regardless of age, race, income and education level. Telomere shortening starts long before disease onset. Further, although we only studied adults here, it is possible that soda consumption is associated with telomere shortening in children, as well," Epel said.
The net effect could mean sugary sodas are aging people prematurely, even if they don't realize it.
The researchers calculated that daily consumption of a 20-ounce soda was associated with 4.6 years of additional biological aging.
"It is critical to understand both dietary factors that may shorten telomeres, as well as dietary factors that may lengthen telomeres. Here it appeared that the only beverage consumption that had a measurable negative association with telomere length was consumption of sugared soda," Cindy Leung, ScD, the lead author of the study said.
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