Eating too much fructose—like the sugar in soda and candy—might mess up how your liver responds to insulin, even if you don’t gain weight or eat more calories overall.

Eating too much fructose, like the sugar in soda and candy, can mess up your liver’s ability to respond to insulin, make more fat in your liver, and raise fat levels in your blood, which can lead to bigger health problems like heart disease.

If you eat less fructose—like the sugar in soda and candy—your liver will make less fat, even if you don’t eat fewer calories overall. This can help reduce fat buildup in the liver, especially if you’re overweight or have fatty liver disease.

Eating too much fructose—like the sugar in soda and sweetened snacks—may slow down your liver’s ability to burn fat, which can lead to fat buildup and make your body less responsive to insulin.

Eating too much fructose—like the sugar in soda and sweetened foods—may cause a protein in your liver to become overactive, which blocks insulin from doing its job, making your liver less responsive to insulin.

Eating a lot of fructose (like in sugary drinks) might turn up the activity of certain liver enzymes that process sugar and make fat, especially in people who already have metabolic problems like obesity or diabetes.