You are what you eat … and drink.

A new study by the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University finds “sugary” drinks kill some 1,600 Canadians each year.

“We know that sugar-sweetened beverages are cause-and-effect for obesity and diabetes,” study author Dariush Mozaffarian tells the Toronto Star. “There’s no intrinsic health value to it. There’s plenty of replacements. This is an easy problem to fix.

“We just have to stop drinking sugary beverages,” he says.

sugary drinks

Those drinks, according to the study, include soda pop, energy and sports drinks as well as fruit beverages, sweetened iced teas and homemade sugary drinks, such as frescas.

The study found that diabetes induced by excessive consumption of sugary beverages was responsible for more than 70 per cent of those deaths, with cardiovascular disease and cancer trailing behind at 25 per cent and four per cent respectively.

And while 40 per cent fewer Canadians per capita die as a result of sugary drinks than in the United States, at least twice as many of us die due to the habit than in Great Britain and France, the study found.

Mozaffarian believes the “culture” around sugary drinks needs to change “so that it’s not cool to drink a one-liter Big Gulp with your friends.”

The study estimates 184,000 people around the world die as a result of consuming sugary drinks.

Some 40% more Americans err capita die as a result of sugary drinks than in Canada. At least twice as many Canadians die due to consuming too many drinks than in Great Britain and France.

“It’s liquid candy,” Corinne Voyer, director of the Quebec Coalition on Weight-Related Problems, tells the paper.

A bottle of soda is more dangerous than a cookie, for example, “because the sugar goes so fast into your body and your liver has to work to metabolize it all,” according to Voyer. “It makes the liver very fat.”