RESEARCH s

Obesity is a persistent public health crisis with a myriad of health and economic consequences. Obesity rates in the United States have risen consistently over the last four decades, increasing from about 13 % of the popula-tion in 1970 to more than 34 % in 2009 [1]. Conse-quently, researchers have focused increasingly more effort towards uncovering the causes of obesity in order to determine effective methods for reversing the condition. Within the last decade, the unique metabolic handling of fructose compared to glucose has been highlighted, leading to increased suspicion of a contributory and pos-sibly even causal role for fructose in the US obesity epi-demic [2,3]. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contributes significantly to total fructose consumptio