Some lab tests show sugar might help tumors grow in artificial settings, but this might not happen in real human bodies under normal conditions.

Eating sugar doesn't directly make cancer grow faster in people. Cancer cells do use sugar differently, but that's just how they work, not because of what we eat.

Drinking sugary drinks might increase your chance of getting cancer because of the sugar they contain. For every extra spoonful of sugar you drink daily, your cancer risk could go up by 16%. When scientists looked just at the sugar part, the link between sugary drinks and cancer disappeared, which points to sugar as the main reason for this connection.

Sugar might raise cancer risk by messing with your body's insulin and causing inflammation, not by directly feeding cancer cells like many people think.

Drinking sugary drinks quickly puts a lot of sugar into your blood, which can create conditions in your body that might help cancer grow because these drinks don't have fiber, don't make you feel full, and get absorbed really fast.

Drinking sugary drinks like soda might raise your chance of getting cancer by about 12% compared to drinking very little, according to a big review of many studies.