Can you get diabetes from eating too many sweets?

No. A lot of people have that mistaken idea. Diabetes is sometimes even called "sugar diabetes," which adds to the confusion. Diabetes can't be caused by eating too much sugar, except when your diabetes was triggered by overweight and you became overweight from eating too many sweets. But even in that case, it wasn't specifically the sugar that was to blame. Diabetes could have developed if you ate too much of anything and gained weight.