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OK.  So we know they're bad for us, NYC's Bloomberg's tried to put an end to them.  But did you know they can kill us? A Harvard s tudy has just found that 180,000 people a year die worldwide, and 25,000 in the U.S., from sugary drinks. "We know that sugar-sweetened beverages are linked to obesity, and that a large number of deaths are caused by obesity-related diseases. But until now, nobody had really put these pieces together," said Gitanjali Singh, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and lead author of the study presented today at the American Heart Association's annual meeting in New Orleans, Bay News 9 reports. The study adds to "mounting evidence that sugar-sweetened beverages, loaded with calories that carry little nutritional value, are a public health hazard," the story notes. You may want to argue the facts a little "but the team tied sugar-sweetened beverages to 133,000 deaths from...

OK. So you don't drink Big Gulps full of sugary stuff. But did you know that your Starbucks drinks may now be censured, too? According to Vivian Yee and Michael M. Grynbaum, NYC's "new regulations regarding coffee hinge on delicate calculations about milk, calorie and sugar ratios. As with other sugary drinks, coffee cups 16 ounces or smaller are unaffected. But unlike sodas, which will max out at 16 ounces, cups of coffee larger than 16 ounces can still be served as long as the barista adds no more than three to five packets of sugar. (The limit depends on the size of the drink.)" Fortunately (and somewhat nonsensically), those lattes and frothy drinks (Dr. Phil calls them "hot milkshakes") will be exempt, because they are 50% milk and the NYC rules don't apply to them. “This will have no impact on a large cup of joe, unless more than four packets of sugar are added,” Samantha Levine, a city spokeswoman, told Yee and Grynbaum. “Real sweet tooths ...