In the journal Family Practice News, researchers reported a study of 934,777 cancer-free adults from the Cancer Prevention Study-II. The participants reported how many sugary drinks — including artificially sweetened drinks — they typically consumed in a day.

Over a median 28-year follow-up, 135,093 of the subjects died of cancer. Ingesting two or more sugar-sweetened drinks a day was associated with an increased risk of dying from colorectal and kidney cancer. Interestingly, consuming artificially sweetened beverages was linked to an increased risk of dying from pancreatic cancer.

When I was in medical school, pancreatic cancer was not a common diagnosis. You would only really see it in alcoholics, drug abusers, and the elderly.

Today, it’s not uncommon to see the illness in younger people who do not have alcohol or drug problems. And the prognosis for pancreatic cancer is not good in the vast majority of cases.

Perhaps the reason we’re seeing such a rise in pancreatic cancer is due to the overuse of artificial sweeteners, which have no place in a healthy diet.

Better to add sweetness with whole foods such as fruits.