Having just a single soft drink a day can have a devastating effect on your body according to a new Australian study. Researchers from Cancer Council Victoria and the University of Melbourne claim that having a soft drink every day drastically increases your risk of cancer.

The study involved 35,000 Australians who developed 3,283 cases of obesity-related cancers. According to the research, the more sugary soft drinks participants drank the higher their risk of cancer, independent of obesity.

Even the research participants were surprised that the cancer risk wasn’t related to obesity, but rather the sugary drinks. “Initially our hypothesis was that drinking soft drinks would cause obesity which would then cause an association with obesity-related cancers but we found that there was more beyond the effect of obesity,” Associate Professor Allison Hodge of Cancer Council Victoria told The Guardian.

“These particular cancers are commonly associated with obesity, however, our research found this risk existed for all participants, no matter their size,” Professor Hodge continues. How do they know? Well the same results were not found from diet soft drinks, which the researchers believe could confirm that sugar is the key to increasing the risk of cancer. “We definitely would like to see these findings confirmed in other studies and then also to understand something about the mechanism and whether sugar could be a driver of this association,” Hodge confirmed.

The study can be found in its entirety, here.