Gastric Cancer Alarm Tied To Soda

Drinking just one soda a day could more than double your risk of stomach cancer, according to researchers at Mass General Brigham.

Story Snapshot

A new study found daily sugar-sweetened beverage drinkers face a 2.45 times higher risk of gastric cancer than people who rarely drink them.
Researchers tracked more than 100,000 people over several decades to reach that number.
Artificially sweetened drinks showed no similar jump in risk in this study.
Other major studies, including a 16-year Japanese study of over 2,000 cancer cases, found no link at all between sugary drinks and stomach cancer.

A Sobering New Number From a Major Cancer Institute

Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute researchers say people who drink at least one sugar-sweetened beverage every day carry more than twice the gastric cancer risk of people who barely touch the stuff. The finding comes from a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Gastro Hep Advances, built on data from more than 100,000 people followed for decades. That is a big number, and it landed with force in health headlines this week.

What Counts as a Sugar-Sweetened Beverage

The study defines sugar-sweetened beverages broadly. Soda, fruit punch, lemonade, and sports drinks all count. That matters because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 63 percent of American adults drink one of these beverages at least once a day. If the risk link holds up, it touches a habit shared by most of the country, not a rare or niche behavior.

Notably, the researchers found no similar risk increase tied to artificially sweetened drinks. Diet soda drinkers in this study did not show the same elevated gastric cancer numbers as regular soda drinkers, according to the press release describing the findings. That distinction matters for anyone weighing a swap from regular to diet as a supposed safer choice.

The study’s authors adjusted for other known risk factors before landing on their 2.45-fold estimate, which is meant to isolate the beverage’s role rather than blame it for effects caused by smoking, diet, or family history. Still, an observational study like this one shows an association, not proof that soda itself causes the cancer.

Decades of Research Paint a Messier Picture

This new finding does not stand alone, and it does not match everything that came before it. A 2022 Japanese cohort study followed people for nearly 17 years and tracked over 2,000 gastric cancer cases. It found sugary drink consumption was not associated with gastric cancer risk at all. That is a flat contradiction of the headline number making news this week.

A 2018 systematic review of prospective studies came to a mixed conclusion. Most studies on sugar and sugary drinks showed no cancer link. But some studies on sugary beverages specifically found risk increases ranging from 23 percent to 200 percent. A separate 2021 review of observational studies looking specifically at gastric cancer outcomes found no significant association for sugar-sweetened or artificially sweetened drinks.

Why One Study Can’t Settle the Debate

Even research on artificial sweeteners, often treated as the safer alternative, tells a similarly split story. A recent review found no overall significant link between artificial sweeteners and cancer risk at most sites studied, gastric cancer included. The pattern across this entire body of research looks familiar to anyone who follows nutrition science: strong headline numbers from single studies, followed by broader reviews that shrink or erase the effect.

None of this means the Mass General Brigham findings should get tossed aside. A study built on 100,000-plus people over decades, published in a peer-reviewed journal, deserves real attention. But readers should also know that decades of other research on this exact question have landed on null results just as often as they have landed on danger signals. Stomach cancer has many known drivers, including smoking, salt-heavy diets, and a common stomach infection called Helicobacter pylori. Sugary drinks may add to that risk pile, or this study may be an outlier in a long, inconsistent research record.

What This Means for Your Next Trip to the Vending Machine

Cutting back on daily soda, punch, and sports drinks is a reasonable move regardless of where the gastric cancer science eventually lands, since sugary drinks are already tied to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Treating this single study as settled fact, though, gets ahead of what the wider research record actually shows. The honest answer right now is that scientists are still working this one out.