There's been some interesting news lately about sugar in all its permutations. A couple of weeks ago, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition included a special supplement devoted to high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a sweetener used in sodas, granola bars, spaghetti sauces, and, it sometimes seems, just about everything else you can find on a grocery shelf. People have had their suspicions that HFCS might not be all that good for us-specifically, that it might somehow incline the American dining public to obesity. There are a number of ways HFCS could at least theoretically do this, one being that it might have some unique metabolic effect, and another being that as a low-cost sweetener it helps makes sweet stuff cheap, and we all know what too many Big Gulps can do to a waistline.

For the most part, the recent studies suggest that HFCS acts no differently in the body than sucrose-plain table sugar. One team did find temporarily higher levels of blood fats in the group that consumed HFCS. But levels of blood sugar and leptin-an important appetite-regulating hormone-were basically the same, whether the sweetener was sucrose or HFCS. Which makes sense, considering that sucrose and HFCS are very similar, chemically speaking: Both are about a 50-50 mix of fructose and glucose (approximately-HFCS is more like 55-45).

But that doesn't mean that really loading up on either sucrose or HFCS is good for you. I talked to a friend of mine, Cynthia Sass, about this. Cynthia's a registered dietician with a number of books to her name (a new book that she co-authored, The Ultimate Diet Log, is coming out in January). Cynthia pointed out that eating lots of fructose-no matter where it comes from-has been linked to problems like high blood pressure and kidney and liver disease. Not to mention gout. And who likes gout?

"While the research is not consistent, I don't think it's time to throw in the towel and say ‘never mind,'" Cynthia said. "I think we're still learning about the unique properties of foods within similar categories that may make one a better choice than another." Honey, for instance, is looking like it delivers some unexpected health benefits, Sass says. But the biggest message is probably to go easy on all sources of concentrated sugar, boring as that sounds. I'm not crazy about the idea of taxing soda and other sugary drinks, as proposed by New York Governor David Patterson the other day (although New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof persuasively argued in favor of the ban on Thursday).  But I do think a soda habit is a particularly bad thing for your health-you're just mainlining sugar, and whether it's HFCS or not, your body doesn't have a good way of handling it. Cookies are much saner, I think. With milk.