We know that sugary sodas aren't good for our bodies; now it turns out that they may not be good for our minds, either. A new study of more than 260,000 people has found a link between sweetened soft-drinks and depression -- and diet sodas may be making matters worse.

Americans drink far more soda than people in other countries -- as much as 170 liters per person per year (no wonder New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg banned super-sized servings of the stuff). But the impact of this study isn't limited to the United States. "Sweetened beverages, coffee and tea are commonly consumed worldwide and have important physical-and may have important mental-health consequences," study author Dr. Honglei Chen, an investigator at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said in a statement.

Related: Are the Health Risks of Soda Really That Bad?

The study, which was released on Tuesday and will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's annual meeting in March, involved 263,925 people between the ages of 50 and 71. Researchers tracked their consumption of beverages like soda, tea, coffee, and other soft drinks from 1995 to 1996 and then, 10 years later, asked them if they had been diagnosed with depression since the year 2000. More than 11,300 of them had.

Participants who drank more than four servings of soda per day were 30 percent more likely to develop depression than participants who did not drink soda at all. People who stuck with fruit punch had a 38 percent higher risk than people who didn't drink sweetened drinks.

And all that extra sugar isn't the actual problem: The research showed that low-calorie diet sodas, iced teas, and fruit punches were linked to an slightly higher risk of depression than the high-calorie stuff. Researchers say that the artificial sweetener aspartame may be to blame.

"Our findings are preliminary, and the underlying biological mechanisms are not known," said Chen. The study found an association but could not conclusively determine whether sodas and other sweet soft drinks cause depression, even after taking into account factors like age, gender, education, smoking, body mass index (BMI) and other issues. Still, the results "are intriguing and consistent with a small but growing body of evidence suggesting that artificially sweetened beverages may be associated with poor health outcomes."

The American Beverage Association took issue with the study, saying that "there is no credible scientific evidence linking sweetened beverage consumption to depression – of any kind."

“We may be in a new year, but there is nothing new about the ways our critics try to attack our industry," the ABA said in a statement sent to Yahoo! Shine. "This research is nothing more than an abstract – it has not been peer-reviewed, published or even, at the very least, presented at a scientific meeting. Furthermore, neither this abstract nor the body of scientific evidence supports that drinking soda or other sweetened beverages causes depression. Thus, promoting any alleged findings without supporting evidence is not only premature, but irresponsible.”

The ABA noted that the 11,311 people diagnosed with depression during the study represents about 4 percent of participants. "Even if the methodology is without flaws, this percentage is well within – and actually below – the 6.7 percent noted by the National Institute of Mental Health at NIH as the national average for the U.S. population aged 18 and older in a given year," they pointed out.

The study did offer a bright side for those who can't do without the caffeinated jolt of their daily sodas. Adults who drank coffee had a 10 percent lower risk of depression compared to people who didn't drink any coffee, according to the study. That reinforces findings from a 2011 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, which said that women who drink fully caffeinated coffee have a lower risk of depression than non-coffee drinkers.

"Our research suggests that cutting out or down on sweetened diet drinks or replacing them with unsweetened coffee may naturally help lower your depression risk," said Chen. "Coffee contains large amounts of caffeine, which is a well-known brain stimulant."

Chen cautions that, if you've been diagnosed with depression, cutting your soda intake isn't necessarily going to help. "More research is needed to confirm these findings," Chen said, "and people with depression should continue to take depression medications prescribed by their doctors."






Do you spend most days with a can of soda by your side? You might want to break that habit. Turns out, all soda -- even diet -- is bad you, and new research suggests it's especially harmful to women. Here are six reasons to give up soft drinks for good.

1. Soda makes you fat. Both regular and diet soft drinks are tied to obesity. In one study, people who drank diet sodas had a 70% greater increase in waist circumference over a few years compared to those who skipped soft drinks.

Diet soft drinks are particularly insidious, says RealAge cofounder Michael F. Roizen, M.D. "Sweet diet soda fuels your desire for other sweets," he explains. It also has a "health halo" effect. "You view choosing a 'diet' drink as virtuous (all those calories saved!). So it feels like you can afford to reward that virtue with a hot fudge sundae."


2. Soda boosts your risk of serious disease. The extra belly fat that often comes with a soft drink habit is linked to heart disease and type 2 diabetes. A recent study in the Journal of Internal Medicine also tied a daily diet soda habit to a higher stroke risk.

3. Regular soft drinks may cause cancer. New research from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health finds drinking two or more regular soft drinks per week may almost double your risk of pancreatic cancer. Researchers speculate that the sugar overload from regular soda triggers insulin production that fuels cancer cell growth.


4. It's bad for your teeth. Yep, your mom was right about this one. And here again, even diet soda is bad news because sugar isn't the worst offender in soft drinks. The big culprit is soda's high acid content: phosphoric, malic, citric, and tartaric acid strip tooth enamel. Citrus-flavored soft drinks are the worst -- they dissolve enamel up to five times more than colas.

5. It's bad for your bones. The same acids that are bad for your teeth also coax calcium from your bones. That goes for regular and diet caffeinated soda. Can't give up your Diet Coke? Roizen recommends upping your daily calcium tally by an extra 20 mg for every 12 ounces of soda you sip.

6. It's bad, even if you don't gain weight. New research from the American Heart Association finds that women are more vulnerable than men to the harmful effects of drinking two or more sugar-sweetened drinks -- including soda -- per day. Soda-sipping women are likely to have a larger waist size, higher "bad" LDL cholesterol, higher levels of triglycerides (harmful fatty acids that can cause heart disease), higher blood sugar, and lower "good" HDL cholesterol -- even if they don't put on a pound.