When you drink one of those bad boys, the liver gets a shot of an overwhelming dose of sugar. The liver simply can't handle such mega-doses by simple metabolism, so the excess sugar is shunted into other pathways that result in the body producing fat. We can see any fat around our waists, but it's pretty much invisible elsewhere.

The liver itself gets filled with fat and then begins to malfunction. That fatazz liver becomes insulin resistant - which means it simply becomes "deaf" to the hormonal signal it receives from insulin. The pancreas responds by making the hormonal signal louder by making more insulin. Eventually the overworked pancreas gives up the ghost and that's when diabetes happens.

If that isn't bad enough, those fats also circulate in the blood and over time, plug up the arteries. When the coronary arteries get blocked, that portion of heart muscle downstream from the blockage dies as a result of the lack of blood flow. It's heart attack time, boyz and gurlz.

All that being said, I'll have myself a Dr. Pepper or a Coke every now and then. I'm going to die from all of the red meat that I consume anyway, so I'm really not all that concerned.