I would actually love to know if it's as bad as coca cola.

Sugar generally?

High-fructose corn syrup specifically.

HFCS compared to Sugar or nothing?

Americans clearly eat way too much Sugar or Sugar like substances. Even if best case HFCS is ruled as healthy as Sugar, it should still be drastically cut back / avoided.

Is there any strong evidence that dietary HFCS is consequentially different than sugar? HFCS is 55%/45% fructose/glucose vs 50%/50% for cane sugar.

That's a mere 5% difference, plus the fact that the gut doesn't need to cleave the fructose from the glucose using sucrase. But AFAIU the cleaving happens readily and rapidly.

It wouldn't be shocking if HFCS was consequentially different, but it seems unlikely. HFCS just seems like a misleading distraction outside arguments about agricultural politics. Worse than a distraction, actually, because relying on flimsy and unnecessary arguments makes it easier for those defending the arguably excessive use of sugar in the food supply to inject FUD into the debate.