Drinking plain water instead of fizzy drinks and fruit juice 'lowers the risk of women developing diabetes'

Women who choose plain water over sweet fizzy drinks or fruit juice, have a lower risk of developing diabetes.
Replacing sweet drinks with water could help stave off the metabolic disorder, according to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health.
But adding water to the sugary beverages a person consumes throughout the day won't make a difference, they said.

The results are based on the drinking habits of 83,000 women followed for more than a decade.
Lead researcher Dr Frank Hu said it is well established that sugary beverages are bad for diabetes risk.
People have recommended drinking plain water instead of sugar-sweetened beverages, he said, 'and the question is whether this kind of substitution has any impact on diabetes'.
Dr Hu and his team collected data from the massive Nurses Health Study, which tracked the health and lifestyle of tens of thousands of women across the U.S.

The study included 82,902 women who answered questions about their diet and health over a 12-year span.
Over time, about 2,700 of them developed diabetes.
The amount of water women drank did not seem to influence their diabetes risk - those who drank more than six cups a day had the same risk as women who drank less than one cup a day.
However, sugar-sweetened drinks and fruit juice were tied to a higher risk of diabetes - about 10 per cent higher for each cup consumed each day.
The research team estimated that if women replaced one cup of fizzy drink or fruit juice with one cup of plain water, their diabetes risk would fall by 7 or 8 per cent.