A global change in dietary habits has occurred over the last few decades resulting from the introduction of sweeteners such as fructose and sucrose by the food industries. For example, regular soft Drinks (SD) and fruit drinks, major source of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) or sugar have increase from 3.9% of the total energy intake in 1977 to 9.2% of the total energy intake in 2001, worldwide soft drinks are the leading cause of added sugar. Recent evidence suggested one association between the intake of sugar sweetened Soft drinks and the risk of obesity and diabetes resulting from large amounts of HFCS used in their manufacture, which raises blood glucose similar to sucrose. In addition, diet Soft Drink contains aspartame sweetener caramel coloring, which are rich in advanced glycation end products for a potentially increase insulin resistance and inflammation.
Human studies and animal models suggest that dietary factors can affect fatty infiltration and lipid peroxidation in various type of liver disease including Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD). More recently increased ingestion of soft drinks was found to be linked to NAFLD independent of metabolic syndrome, with NAFLD patients consuming 5 times the amount of carbohydrates from soft drinks as compare to healthy persons. It is reported that individual consuming more than one soft drink daily showed a high prevalence of metabolic syndrome than those consuming less than one soft drink per day. This review emphasizes some hard fact about soft drink reviews fructose metabolism and explains how fructose contribute to the development of obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and NAFLD.
The term soft drink more commonly known as soda, soda pop, pop, coke-Pepsi or tonic refers to a nonalcoholic beverage that is usually carbonated. Two types of soft drinks are used: regular SD which are sweetened with sugar (fructose) and diet SD which are sweetened with non-caloric sweeteners (aspartame). Upto 1980s, SD contained most of their food energy in the form of refine can sugar or corn syrup. Today High- fructose corn syrup (HFCS) s used almost exclusively as a sweetener in the United States and in other countries, because of its lower cost. Added sweetener in regular SD is an important components of our diet, representing 318 Kcal of dietary intake or 16% of all calorie intake. HFCS made by enzymatic isomerization of glucose to fructose was introduced as HFCS-42(42% of fructose) and HFCS-55(55% of fructose) in 1967 and 1977 respectively and opened a new frontier for the sweetener and SD industries. The use of sweetener has increased considerably worldwide and soft drink beverage seem to be a major contributor for obesity, diabetes mellitus, hyper lipidemia, insulin resistance, hypertension metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. In this review, we sought to focus attention on the impact of soft drinks on the accumulation of fat in the liver. This has significant clinical implications as the percentage of NAFLD correlates strongly with diabetes, cardiovascular disease and diffuse atherosclerosis.
