When you compare the two, drinking a can of soda doesn't seem nearly as bad as smoking a cigarette. But a new study might have you looking at carbonated drinks the same way you do a pack of smokes.

CBS News recently reported that guzzling your favorite soda can be the health hazard equivalent of lighting up and puffing a cigarette.

The new research says that drinking a daily amount of 20-ounce soda is actually can help speed the aging process up by five years!  This staggering stat is actually on the same par as the aging effects smoking can have too.

"We think we can get away with drinking lots of soda as long as we are not gaining weight," said Elissa Epel, who was also a part of the research study. "But this suggests that there is an invisible pathway that leads to accelerated aging."

"This finding is alarming because it suggest that soda may be aging us, in ways we are not even aware of," Dr. Epel explained.

So how did the study work? Dr. Epel and her team followed 5300 healthy adults over the span of five years. 

In conducting their analysis, the team discovered that for people who drank more sugar-sweetened beverages, the ends of their chromosomes, known as telomeres, were shorter.

The shorter the telomere, the less a cell can regenerate which results in aging the body, as well as raising the risk of disease and early death.

Despite the growing concern over sugary beverages, bills that would ban or seek to regulate the drinks have all failed to be passed. New York City's former mayor Bloomberg also lost his fight to ban super-sized versions of these drinks. He is now supporting a bill that would levy a tax on soda distributors.

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