Response to Letter Regarding Article, 'Estimated Global, Regional, and National Disease Burdens Related to Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption in 2010'

Autier and colleagues suggest that disease burdens attributable to individual dietary factors such as sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are unquantifiable. Decades of robust research have established methods to evaluate population-health impacts of modifiable risk factors as diverse as air pollution, smoking, blood pressure, and poor diet.1 We agree that such factors often cluster: Like any other cause of disease, SSB consumption combines with multiple factors to characterize individuals’ lifestyles and population health. However, the multifactorial nature of disease does not preclude reasonable estimation of the impact of any single factor, and well-designed prevention strategies are unattainable without knowledge of the contributions of the individual risk factors to disease. As a result of clustering of risks, we agree that crude correlations of exposure and disease often result in …