The objective of this paper was to investigate the association between frequency of cola and noncola soft drink intake (with and without sugar) with single components of the metabolic syndrome, with a calculated index of metabolic syndrome (MetSRisk index) and the complete metabolic syndrome. Analyses were performed on the cross-sectional data of the Oslo Health Study which included 5,373 men and 6,181 women. The MetSRisk index was calculated to estimate many metabolic syndrome components. Results showed that soft drink intake was positively associated with the complete metabolic syndrome, independent of the presence or absence of sugar in the soft drink. For instance, the frequency of cola intake was consistently associated with all the single metabolic syndrome-related risk factors, with the estimated MetSRisk index and with the complete metabolic syndrome, even after controlling for all appropriate confounding variables. In contrast, the association between the frequency of intake of noncola soft drinks and various measures of metabolic risk disappeared after adjusting with many confounding variables. Moreover, cola intake was found to be significantly associated with waist circumference after controlling for body mass index, but the inverse was not observed. Thus, these results suggest that the frequency of soft drink intake, especially cola, irrespective of the presence or absence of sugar, appears to be positively associated with the metabolic syndrome.
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