Soft drinks are factor in metabolic syndrome

Metabolic syndrome, also known as Syndrome X, consists of a cluster of risk factor that singnificantly increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease. In a study of 3,470 middle-age women, Harvard Medical School researchers found that consumption of one soft drink daily-regardless of whether it contained high-fructose corn syrup or artifcial sweeteners-increased the risk of metabolic syndrome by 44 to 50 percent. Soft drink consumption also significantly increased the chances of developing the individual components of metabolic syndrome, including abdominal obesity, impaired glucose tolerance, high blogg pressure, elevated triglycerides, and low HDL cholesterol. the researchers wrote, "The high sweetness of diet or regular diet soft drinks ,ay lead to conditioning for greater preference for intake of sweetened items".