For a start, we can exercise to use as many of our muscles as possible, and to help them use up the extra fatty fuel.

New research by physiologists Christina Koutsari and Adrianne Hardman at the University of Loughborough reveals that a moderate amount of daily exercise might prevent the dramatic rise in blood triglyceride levels that happens when healthy volunteers are switched to a high-sugar diet.

We have to watch what we eat as well as when we eat them. Eating or drinking certain things can increase fat secretion by the liver and have just as detrimental an effect as ingesting saturated fat. Drink too much alcohol, (the equivalent of more than a glass or two of wine a day) and you stimulate your liver to churn out the very fats that promote heart disease.

The big surprise is that sugary foods could be just as damaging as fats and alcohol. "Foods high in fructose and the ordinary sugar of surcose may be just as bad as saturated fats," says Zammit.

Over the past decade or so, various studies have suggested that the body treats fructose in a markedly different way from glucose. What's worrying is that fructose is selectively shunted towards the liver, and the formation of fats.

For a start, it is metabolised in the liver to provide one of the building blocks of triglycerides. But a fructose-rich diet also directly stimulates the liver to secrete those dangerous triglycerides, just as bombarding the liver with insulin does. "Fructose could be mimicking what I think frequent insulin secretion does," Zammit explains.

In the short term, it could promote insulin resistance in muscle - the first step to Syndrome X - and in the long term, it could promote heart disease.