According to the researchers replacing sweet drinks with water could help stave off the metabolic disorder.

However adding water to the sugary beverages a person consumes during the day won’t make a difference, they said.

The results are based on the drinking habits of 83,000 women followed for more than a decade.

People have recommended drinking plain water instead of sugar-sweetened beverages, he said, ‘and the question is whether this kind of substitution has any impact on diabetes’.

Dr Hu and his team collected date from the massive Nurses Health Study, which tracked the health and lifestyle of tens of thousands of women across the U.S.

The bottom line, he said, is that plain water is one of the best calorie-free choices for drinks, and 'if the water is too plain, you can add a squeeze of lemon or lime'.

Dr Barry Popkin, a professor at the University Of North Carolina School Of Public Health who was not involved in the study, said: 'It is essentially not that water helps, except with hydration, but that the others hurt.'