Well, I just wrote a comment for your other story about Jones Soda Company. And I questioned if there was a difference bewteen corn syrup & cane syrup. I guess Pepsi agrees with me that there isn't a dirrerence. I still say that neither is healthy.

Years ago, Pepsi changed from sucrose/invert sugar to HFCS because of 2 outstanding reasons:
1. The US gov't in their infinite wisdom to protect the high cost domestic cane and beet sugar industry resorted to a system of quotas and tariffs to keep an artificially high price for raw sugar entering the country that would serve to allow the domestic industry to raise their prices to that threshold.
2.The HFCS industry led by ADM and Cargill supported by Coke expanded their capacity to produce what in essence is invert sugar from corn. Since ethanol was not a viable secondary choice, the HFCS industry offered huge discounts, tolling arrangement(fee for converting the corn starch to sugar) and multy year fixed priced contracts. As the industry expanded the importing refiners and domestic sellers lost the soft drink industry to 55HFCS and eventually a tremendous share of the sugar market except for the cereal, candy and the baking industries that paled in comparison to the soft drink, belly wash(still drink) jams jellies topping etc etc industries.
If Pepsi is funding this study it is all about economics. High energy prices and the expansion of the ethanol industry to provide a fuel from corn( at the expense of HFCS), I believe has Pepsi management quite concerned for the future cost and availability of the sweetener for their products.
Because of the demand for ethanol today, the price structure for HFCS has changed dramatically and sugar in some cases(geographics) can compete.

However, the sugar industry, in order to win back the soft drink manufacturers, would have to retool their refineries and factories(beet) in order to provide the liquid sugar that the soft drink makers have used for the past 20 years.
Forget about the health issue. That is only a screen in my opinion. The Pepsi management is among the best in US business. They have always been ahead of the curve going back to the 60"s.
Remember if one of the two switches,(Coke/Pepsi) the other has to follow for competitive reasons.Last time it was Coke allowing 50% replacement and then as industry capacity expanded, 100% replacement. This time, well........time will tell.

Spare me! Why are we having this type of conversation? Is it not clear to everyone with half brain what sugars will do if consumed in execess? Like alcohol,(which itself is also a sugar trap as well)or any other item, consumed on a regular basis, as in 5 portions a day, adds up, period. Keep in mind the old salesmans axiom, "you buy it for dollar, and sell it for two, and make sure it is habit forming" is still the mantra in the minds of marketers everywhere. And I am ok with that, unless it makes my family, friends or colleagues sick, and perhaps some other ethical issues that should be included. In the case of high fructose syrup, yes I personally belive there are some real chemical differences, but I think that overall, it's just plain refined sugar. If however, one studies the entire process from ground to human veins for both natural sugar and high fructose syrup, you are going to see massive difference in favor of the syrups. That massive difference is calculated in dollars saved, and those dollars are put to good use to further adversiting to make sure that the old salesman's motto is well heeded to and working. For your interest I include a statement from a study made by couple of authorities in the subject.

"Earl Mindell and Virginia Hopkins, authors of "Prescription Alternatives," blame our nation's sharp rise in diabetes on increased consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and the resulting depletion of chromium in the body. Chromium is important in helping glucose pass from the bloodstream into the cells. Mindell and Hopkins say that studies done at the US Department of Agriculture's Human Nutrition Resource Center reveal that consuming fructose in this form causes chromium levels to drop, in turn raising LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, and impairing immune system function. "As our consumption of high fructose corn syrup has risen 250 percent in the past 15 years, our rate of diabetes has increased approximately 45 percent in about the same time period," said Mindell."