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is the obesity epidemic.
    The high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in most soda is worse than regular sugar, despite the propaganda in the multimillion-dollar ad campaign from the Corn Refiners Association rebranding HFCS as natural “corn sugar.” The fructose doesn’t provide the same feedback control on appetite as regular sugar, making the addiction worse. It fact, it leads to a blocking of the appetite-control hormones, especially
leptin
, the hormone that tells your brain you are full. So you continue to eat and eat, crave and crave, and your body thinks you are starving even though you are drowning in calories. HFCS is the number one source of calories in our diet. As an extra “bonus,” high-fructose corn syrup often contains mercury as a by-product of processing.
    New research from Dr. Bruce Ames, professor emeritus of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California, Berkeley, shows that the free fructose in HFCS causes a leaky gut. Little Lego-like attachments called tight junctions hold the cells of the intestinal lining together. These attachments require energy to stick together. When you eat or drink HFCS, it requires more energy to be absorbed into the body than regular sugar,which depletes the energy supply in the intestinal lining, so those attachments weaken. Food proteins and bacterial toxins then “leak” into your bloodstream through the wall of your intestines, causing your immune system to go into gear and produce system-wide inflammation. The inflammation, in turn, triggers more insulin resistance, weight gain, and diabetes.
    So you see, HFCS is
not
just like regular sugar. It has dangerous effects on the body that drive more inflammation, more obesity and diabetes, and more addiction.

LIQUID SUGAR CALORIES (AKA LIQUID DEATH): WHY THEY ARE DIFFERENT FROM REGULAR SUGAR
    Remember the rat study? It showed us that sugar-sweetened water (whether sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners) is eight times more addictive than cocaine. Even more than junk food, fast food, or processed carbs such as bread and pasta or chips, sweet drinks have super-addictive properties. While regular old sugary or starchy food will still cause cravings and addiction, the liquid stuff wreaks even more havoc.
    It’s easy not to notice all those empty calories hidden in sweet drinks. Drinks don’t fill you up, which is why, if you include sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened drinks, you end up eating more total calories in a day. They are easy to consume without thinking about it; we call that passive consumption. They are just drinks, after all. But they add up fast and crowd out real food from your diet. Plus, artificially sweetened drinks jack up your cravings, driving you to eat more food over the course of the day.
    Liquid sugar is absorbed very quickly, driving up blood sugar and insulin and mainlining fructose to your liver, setting off a cascade of events that causes weight gain and more cravings. When your insulin spikes and your blood sugar drops, your body sees it as a life-threatening emergency, so you are driven to go looking for your next sugar fix.
    It’s not just soda we have to worry about, but also sports drinks, sweetened teas and coffees, energy drinks, fruit drinks, and hundreds of other sugary drinks. Ounce per ounce, orange juice has more sugar than cola. If you consume these highly sweetened drinks, your taste buds become adapted to this high-intensity sweetness, and other real, whole food such as vegetables or fruit tastes bland and boring.
    Fully 90 percent of kids and 50 percent of the US population drinks soda once a day. One billion cans of Coke are consumed daily around the world. In a review of all the relevant research, scientists found that the number one cause of obesity is sugar-sweetened beverages. One can of soda a day increases a kid’s chance of obesity by 60 percent, and in a study of more than 90,000 women, one soda a day increased the