Sugary soft drinks, fruit drinks, sweets, ice cream, cakes and cookies are on the list of products that could lead to kidney stones.

The people in the study who ate the most added sugar had between a 39% to 88% higher occurrence of kidney stones than people who ate less added sugar.

Kidney stones are made of minerals and salts, and they can affect any part of the urinary tract, from the kidneys where they originate to the bladder. They usually form when the urine becomes concentrated and minerals then crystallize and stick together, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Added sugars included in the study were brown sugar, cane syrup, corn syrups, corn syrup solids, dextrose, fructose, fruit syrups, honey, maple syrup, molasses, pancake syrups, raw sugar, sorghum syrups, and white sugar. Naturally occurring sugars in milk and fruit were not considered added sugars.

The 25% of people who ate the least added sugar and who had the lowest rate of developing kidney stones ate, on average, 58 added calories of sugar, while the 25% of people in the study who ate the most sugar and had the highest rate of developing kidney stones ate, on average, 542 calories of added sugar.

Among the 25% of people in the study who ate the least added sugar, 9.6% of them had kidney stones during the 11-year study period. That’s compared to the 25% of people in the study who ate the most added sugar, of whom 11.7% had kidney stones. That increase in kidney stone prevalence translates to an increased risk of 39%, the researchers said.

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