A heart surgeon has labelled one of the world's most widely consumed drinks "liquid death", urging people they should not consume it "period". Dr Jeremy London holds board certification in general surgery, vascular surgery and thoracic surgery, and regularly shares guidance on social media and in interviews. He is far from alone in sounding the alarm over the damaging effects of soft drinks on your health.
In an Instagram post, Dr London outlined "four things I absolutely avoid as a heart surgeon". These were smoking, alcohol, breads and pastas, and soft drinks. He said: "Number one, smoking: no question the single worst thing you can do for your entire body. Destroys your lungs, causes lung cancer, high cardiovascular risks, heart attacks and strokes, don't smoke."
Alcohol came second on his list. He said: "Hate to break it to you [but it's] toxic. Toxic to every cell in your body. Your body, your rules, you decide for yourself. For me personally removing alcohol from my life has probably been one of the most transformative decisions I've made as an adult."
Soft drinks were next in his sights. He said: "Liquid death. Just don't drink them. Period. Done."
Finally, Dr London warned: "Avoid breads and pastas. Avoid the refined flours and wheats. Eighty per cent of weight control is diet, 20% is exercise. I guarantee you can out-eat any exercise that you do."
In a subsequent interview with Today, Dr London stood firmly by his stance on soft drinks though he did admit that describing them as "liquid death" was to draw attention: "I think that soft drinks are just a scourge in our society, and so I was really trying to get some attention. Obviously, high-calorie soft drinks and ingesting a lot of calories that people don't realise they're getting with the sugar-based soft drinks is a big no-no."
Yet he is far from alone among leading medical professionals in believing that soft drinks pose a greater threat to health than most people appreciate. Dr William Li recently told the Zoe podcast: "Soda is everyone's favourite whipping boy. Rightfully so. The preponderance of clinical evidence, public health evidence, shows that high consumption of soda is associated with everything from metabolic disease to cardiovascular disease to cancer risk.
"But is it the sugar? Is glucose that demonic element that we need to crucify? Answer's no. Soda is not just water, otherwise that'd be just carbonated water. But soda itself has all these additives, colours, flavourings, preservatives, stabilisers... that is accumulated exposure to toxins. It's not one exposure, it's the chronic exposure over time."