Sugary beverages like sodas and energy drinks are designed to be hyper-palatable, laden with extravagant amounts of sweeteners to stimulate pleasure centers in the brain.
So other than destroying your teeth, it sounds like the conclusion here is more or less that being overweight is unhealthy and overweight people tend to drink sugary drinks. It’s just empty calories. If you’re naturally lean despite drinking sugar-sweetened drinks then the negative health effects of it are probably significantly lower.
Personally, I just tend to consume mostly artificially sweetened drinks. It takes the edge off when I desire something sweet and to get any significant negative health effects from aspartamine you’d need to be consuming insane amounts of it.
Artificial sweeteners appear to change the host microbiome, lead to decreased satiety, and alter glucose homeostasis, and are associated with increased caloric consumption and weight gain.
So other than destroying your teeth, it sounds like the conclusion here is more or less that being overweight is unhealthy and overweight people tend to drink sugary drinks. It’s just empty calories. If you’re naturally lean despite drinking sugar-sweetened drinks then the negative health effects of it are probably significantly lower.
Personally, I just tend to consume mostly artificially sweetened drinks. It takes the edge off when I desire something sweet and to get any significant negative health effects from aspartamine you’d need to be consuming insane amounts of it.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29159583/
This sounds like insulin resistance could happen additionally to weight gain.