Harvard researchers linked together that sugary drinks helped cause 180,000 deaths a year worldwide and 25,000 in the United States alone.

This study were researched by Gitanjali Singh and her colleagues over the past five years. They revealed their research Tuesday at the American Heart Association's annual meeting in New Orleans.

"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," Singh, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and lead author of the study said at the meeting.

Using data from national health surveys around the world, the team tied sugar-sweetened beverages to 133,000 deaths from diabetes, 44,000 deaths from cardiovascular diseases and 6,000 deaths from cancer in 2010, ABC News reported.

This sharing of research comes off the heels of what was supposed to be a soda-ban in New York City on March 11, until a judge threw out the ban supersized sugary drinks proposal from Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

"I think our findings should really impel policymakers to make effective policies to reduce sugary beverage consumption since it causes a significant number of deaths," Singh said at the meeting, adding that she thinks "cause" is an appropriate word despite the limitations of the association study.

The American Beverage Association criticized the study, calling it "more about sensationalism than science."

"It does not show that consuming sugar-sweetened beverages causes chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer - the real causes of death among the studied subjects," the industry group said in a statement. "The researchers make a huge leap when they take beverage intake calculations from around the globe and allege that those beverages are the cause of deaths which the authors themselves acknowledge are due to chronic disease."

The study will reportedly appear in a peer-reviewed journal.