Genetic risk of obesity Sugary drinks
For people who are genetically predisposed to obesity, drinking a lot of sugary beverages could make their weight problem worse by heightening the effects of their obesity genes, a new study suggests. "Almost everyone carries some genetic risk of obesity," says Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health and an author on the study. "People who carry a lot of obesity genes have a higher risk. People who drink a lot of soda also have a higher risk of obesity. For people who have both, their risk of obesity is much greater than either factor alone," he says. To come to these conclusions, researchers examined data on 6,934 women from the Nurses' Health Study; 4,423 men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study; and 21,740 women from the Women's Genome Health Study. Participants in all three studies were of European ancestry; genetic profiles were available on all of them, which allowed scientists to lo...