Could consuming sugary drinks increase your risk for stomach cancer?

Author: Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2026, 12:23pm

Follow the podcast on

Having one sugary drink a day probably doesn't feel like a particularly dangerous habit, but a large new study published in the journal Gastro Hep Advances suggests regularly drinking sugar-sweetened beverages could be associated with a large increase in the risk of stomach cancer.

The researchers found that people consuming more than one sugary drink a day had around 2.5 times the risk of developing gastric cancer compared with people drinking them less than once a month. Among women, the association was even stronger, at around three times the risk.

The study analysed two enormous long-running studies of 112,284 people where the participants regularly provided information about their health and lifestyle, while detailed food questionnaires collected every four years recorded what they ate and drank.

Sugary drinks included regular fizzy drinks, fruit punch, lemonade and sports drinks. One serving was defined as 8 fluid ounces, about 237 mL. Participants were divided into five groups, from fewer than one serving a month to more than one every day.

Across more than 3.2 million person-years of observation, 278 people developed gastric cancer.

After adjusting for factors including body weight, smoking, alcohol consumption, diabetes, physical activity, calorie intake and overall diet quality, people drinking more than one sugary beverage a day had 2.45 times the risk of gastric cancer compared with people who essentially never drank them.

One of the strongest known risk factors for stomach cancer is infection with Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that can live in the stomach lining and cause long-term inflammation.

Researchers had H. pylori antibody measurements for a smaller subset of participants. Interestingly, sugary-drink consumption wasn't associated with H. pylori infection, suggesting the bacteria didn't explain the relationship they observed.

They then looked at fructose, one of the major sugars in sugar-sweetened drinks.

Higher total fructose consumption was also associated with greater gastric cancer incidence overall and particularly among women.

Scientists don't yet know how sugary drinks might influence cancer development. Possible mechanisms include weight gain, insulin resistance, inflammation, DNA damage and changes to the microbes living in our digestive system, but the biological mechanism remains unknown.

Interestingly, the same pattern wasn't seen with artificially sweetened beverages.

This was an observational study, so it can identify an association but can't prove cause and effect. Researchers couldn't randomly assign people to drink soft drinks every day for decades, so other differences between frequent and infrequent sugary-drink consumers could still contribute to the results.

Researchers now need to reproduce the results in other populations and work out whether fructose or another aspect of sugary drinks could actually be contributing to cancer development.

For now, it's another reminder that when it comes to our health, the small things we consume every day may matter more than the occasional treat.

LISTEN ABOVE