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This is a junk study that makes the basic logical fallacy of correlation is not necessarily causation.
The study is a meta study of other studies of approximately 12,000 European women 50 to 72 years old who were asked questions and followed for 22 years. The findings are minor correlations of morbiditywithin overall morbidity without adjusting for the fact that in this group many became more obese after having been obese for much of their lives and were entering the period where adult onset diseases such as stroke, heart attacks, peripheral artery disease, and diabetes, all of which have a much higher morbidity rate than the observed diet drink rate, are diagnosed or observed.
Obese persons are also the population most likely to adopt drinking “diet” or lower calorically sweetened foods and drinks in an effort to lose the weight that is their primary health risk which has the highest combined morbidity rate when the morbidity of all diseases associated with obesity, those exact diseases listed in the previous paragraph among others. The so-called observed morbidity associated with diet drinks, much less the named “Coke” in many hyped headlines, is a mirage of poor statistical analysis or funding bias. The researchers are seeing what they want to see.