(NaturalNews) For years, advocates of natural health have been hammering away at the message that soda causes diabetes and obesity.
The soda industry, meanwhile, has remained in denial mode, mirroring
the ridiculous position of the tobacco industry that "nicotine is not
addictive." Soda doesn't cause diabetes, the industry claims, and it's
perfectly safe to consume in essentially unlimited quantities.

The Corn Refiners Association has joined the denial with its own spin campaign that seeks to convince
people High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is totally natural and
completely harmless. HFCS is, of course, the primary sweetener used in
sodas and soft drinks.

Now comes new research presented at the American Heart Association's Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and
Prevention annual conference in San Francisco. This new research
reveals that over the last decade, soda consumption has conservatively
caused:

• 130,000 new cases of diabetes
• 14,000 new cases of heart disease
• 50,000 more "life years" with heart disease over the last decade

"The finding suggests that any kind of policy that reduces consumption might
have a dramatic health benefit," said senior study author Dr. Kirsten
Bibbins-Domingo (associate professor of medicine at the University of
California, San Francisco).

The American Beverage Association, meanwhile, says this study hasn't been published in a peer-reviewed
medical journal yet and therefore it doesn't count. Soda consumption
doesn't cause diabetes or heart disease, they claim, because "...both
heart disease and diabetes are complex conditions with no single cause
and no single solution."

It's silly logic, of course: Diabetes obviously has a cause. It's not some spontaneous disease that appears out of nowhere. And when
you go looking for the cause, you obviously have to look at dietary
factors since diabetes is a disease related to the consumption and
metabolism of dietary sugars. Once you do that, sodas immediately raise a red flag because they're liquid sugar in a highly-concentrated form that does not exist naturally in nature.

HFCS doesn't grow on trees, in other words. Nature provides sugars locked
into insoluble fibers that slow digestion and lower the effective
glycemic index of sugars that are consumed. In nature, sugars are
always combined with minerals, too, and many of those minerals help
prevent diabetes and heart disease. But High-Fructose Corn Syrup is
stripped of virtually all those minerals. It contains no fiber and no
healing phytonutrients that you might encounter in plants. As a result,
HFCS -- sometimes dubbed "liquid Satan" -- might be called a dietary poison that causes disease while contributing to nutritional deficiencies that accelerate disease.

Bone loss

Interestingly, this new study did not look at loss of bone density, which is another side effect of drinking soda. Due to the extremely
high acidity of the HFCS sweetener combined with the phosphoric acid
used in sodas, people who drink sodas often lose bone minerals and end
up being diagnosed with osteoporosis (even at a relatively young age).

Other people end up with kidney stones due to all these minerals passing through the kidneys and contributing
to the built up of mineral deposits there. Long-term soda consumers may
even suffer from pancreatic cancer due to the extreme stress placed on the pancreas following the consumption of liquid sugars.

In all, soda consumption is linked to at least six serious diseases:

#1) Diabetes
#2) Obesity
#3) Heart disease
#4) Cancer
#5) Osteoporosis
#6) Kidney stones

That's why taxing sodas is more than merely a way to raise money through soda sales; it's also
a way to dramatically reduce the cost of treating these diseases. It's
no surprise that several U.S. states are now starting to seriously
consider slapping new taxes on sodas and other "junk" beverages..