Eating too much fructose—like the sugar in soda and fruit juice—makes your liver create more fat than other sugars or fatty foods do, and that extra fat can mess with how your body responds to insulin.

Drinking sugary sodas and other drinks high in fructose may cause your liver to make more fat than when you eat glucose, leading to fatty liver and other health problems.

Eating a lot of sugar like high-fructose corn syrup makes your liver produce more fat than eating a lot of fatty foods does, and this happens in both people and mice.

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 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.

When you drink sugary sodas or eat lots of fructose (like in high-fructose corn syrup), your liver might turn it into fat and make you more resistant to insulin — but this usually only happens with lots of it in liquid form, not from normal amounts in fruit or food.