Two new studies add to an overwhelming amount of data that supports the assertion that artificially-sweetened and sugar-sweetened soda beverages cause disease. Will Coke, Pepsi, and others in the billion-dollar sugar industry experience the same legal troubles as those in the tobacco industry? I struggle to care whether ignorant and addicted people choose to continue to consume this poison on a consistent basis. This is, after all, a free country. I care that everyone else should have to pay the health care expenses such people incur. Or, does living in a free country mean that you can run up bills at someone else's expense?

We already know that sugar-sweetened drinks worsen the health of overweight and obese people. A randomized control trial in healthy young men shows that it only takes three weeks of consuming 20 ounces of sugar-sweetened drinks per day¹ to induce adverse changes to cholesterol particle size, degree of inflammation in the blood and level of fasting blood sugar. This is stunning. It shows that these deadly beverages begin deteriorating metabolism in completely healthy people in a very short period of time.

If you think this means you may reach for an artificially-sweetened soda--think again! Researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center have shown that adults ages 65 to 74, who regularly consumed artificially-sweetened beverages, experienced a triple-size ballooning of their guts compared to those who did not drink artificially-sweetened beverages (they are even worse than sugar-sweetened drinks). If a person consumed more than two artificially-sweetened drinks per day, then their waistlines swelled five times more.

Millions of Americans are addicted to the chemical-stimulant flavoring systems used in these beverages--a system of addiction that has been understood by these money-hungry manufacturers for decades. As metabolic disease in our country takes over lung cancer in terms of health care costs, look for states to try to fund their metabolic-disease-ridden health care systems with a tobacco-like campaign against the soda industry.