Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's why we haven't had anyone start smoking in decades.. Soda sales are down but obesity is still up, so the calories are coming from somewhere. If you believe the other common stories, we're drinking the calories. I'd wager they come from the rise of coffee-based beverages - which would not be considered soda - but I don't have data to back that up.
A) If a beverage has a certain number of calories from sugar per volume, it doesn't really matter whether it's cola-flavored, orange-flavored, vanilla-flavored, tea-flavored, natural-flavored, artificially-flavored, carbonated, uncarbonated, caffeinated, or uncaffeinated. They're all functionally soft drinks, from a dietary perspective, but the graph that charts the decline in carbonated soda does not show the other…
With regard to B), this is well explored and is called 'GI' or 'Glycemic Index'.[1] High GI foods cause an insulin response in an effort to maintain blood glucose at 5.6 (fasting) - 11.1 mmol/l (postprandial), one of insulins roles is to cause cells to remove sugar from blood and store it as muscle and liver glycogen first then body fat. Once the sugar has been removed from general circulation the hungry feeling recurs.
Saturated fats provided the longest sensation of satiety, followed by protein, then high fibre carbohydrates.
Additionally, our livers have the nifty ability to create sure from pyruvate, lactate, glycerol, and glucogenic amino acids through a process called Gluconeogenesis.[2] Loosely, this is handy for the brain which usually uses glucose for energy, except during fasting when ketones are used.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis