Remember this ad for high fructose corn syrup?

Not so much, as it turns out:

A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.

"Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn't true, at least under the conditions of our tests," said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction.

In other health news...

Lengthier smoking habits—but not more intense ones—seem to reduce the odds of developing Parkinson's disease, according to a study in Neurology.... Researchers compared the smoking histories of 305,468 elderly subjects, 1,662 of whom had been diagnosed with the disease in the previous decade. Compared to the nonsmokers, subjects who had smoked at least a pack a day for one to nine years were only 4% less likely to develop Parkinson's. But subjects who smoked as many cigarettes a day for more than 30 years had 41% shorter odds of developing the disease.

So it's cane sugar and smokes from now on.