Mr. Merges makes the latter by cooking toasted groats in sugar and letting the whole mass cool and set before crushing the caramelized groats to make a crunchy garnish.

WSJ: Buck-Wild for Buckwheat

Devotees make their own by brewing tea and sugar with a flat, solid mass of yeasts and bacteria.

WSJ: High Tea Has a New Meaning

Commenting on the results, Dr Matthew Hobbs, head of research at Diabetes UK, said the link between sugar-sweetened soft drinks and Type-2 diabetes persisted even when body mass index was taken into account.

BBC: Diabetes warning over soft drinks

"The investigators examined changes in sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and then its association with change in body fatness or BMI (body mass index), and subsequent deaths from cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer, " says Rachel Johnson, professor of nutrition at the University of Vermont in Burlington and chair of the American Heart Assocation's Nutrition Committee, who was not involved in the study.

CNN: Sugary drinks linked to 180,000 deaths worldwide