Think about this: in 15 years...

[Fridays Child]

...fully 50% of Americans--regardless of who we vote for, no matter who we hate--will have type II diabetes.

The next time you're out in public, take a look around. One half of everyone you see will be facing heart disease, blindness, limb amputations, permanent disability, job losses, endless medical bills. The streets will be overflowing with homeless families, untold millions of children will be traumatized by the loss of one or both parents, crime will skyrocket, every single social safety net will fail catastrophically. And, when it happens, finger wagging and "I told you so" will be utterly irrelevant.

I am a card-carrying, unreconstructed Liberal. I think that baggers (and right wingers, in general) are crazier than proverbial shit house rats. But so what? That doesn't fix a damned thing. The challenge is figuring out how to transcend our differences, now, and solve the problem.

That is the stuff of Nobel prizes.

[A HERETIC I AM]

1. Do away with High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Problem almost completely solved.

[Fridays Child]

4. Wouldn't it be great, if the solution were that simple?

[MannyGoldstein]

2. How do you figure?

Seems a little high.

Less than 10% right now.

[Fridays Child]

5. Not my figures.

I attended a statewide diabetes symposium at the University of Arizona, a couple of months ago. Evidently, the 50% projection is considered pretty reasonable. But, even if the percentage of Americans with type II diabetes merely doubles over the next ten to fifteen years, the tipping point will probably be reached.

[adirondacker]

3. Having grown up on a family farm, I'm appalled at the amount of crap food in supermarkets.

I try and buy as much as possible in health food stores and farmers markets (there's no coop here within 100 miles).

Big Ag, mega corp grocery chains, and fast food are destroying our population's health.

[Fridays Child]

6. And, no matter how hard we work, individually, to safeguard our own health...

...we will all pay the bill for this epidemic--literally and figuratively.

[pipoman]

7. Oh, not so much...

people in general are eating better and taking better care of themselves. We are on the cusp of the changing of the generational guard. The sedentary, "eat what is put in front of you" crowd is the aging generation and the incoming generation is health aware, and weight conscious. I have been a chef and restaurant manager in a progressive retirement community for the last 5 years. The newest residents are so obviously of a different world than the last it is almost unbelievable to me. Their expectations are higher of their food and dining experience, amenities like wellness/fitness facilities, gardening options, entertainment opportunities, etc. I have made healthier menu options based on demand of my customers. We first saw this change in "independent living" dining restaurants now we are beginning to see a need for revolutionary change in our health care facilities. This is why I, just this week, was named Executive Chef for all 6 kitchens in our organization..that is to bring progressive change to health care dining. Exciting times.

[Fridays Child]

9. Congratulations!

In any case, this is what I learned, recently, at Arizona's annual diabetes symposium.

[pipoman]

13. Thanks,

Certainly not to diminish the historical growth of diabetes, I suspect we have reached the summit of growth and will begin a downward trend. The elimination of high fructose corn syrup and minimization of use of corn syrup in general will show an effect IMO. Many recipes from the 50's forward included corn syrup as a primary sweetener. I have reduced the use of corn syrup in all recipes. We now never use high fructose, and use corn syrup only for the chemical effect of sugar stabilization. A rate of 6 to 1 sugar to corn syrup will inhibit sugar re-crystallization in recipes calling for more corn syrup than is necessary. Carb consciousness, gluten intolerance recognition, the list goes on leading to better overall health in the future.

[Dreamer Tatum]

8. Look at the bright side

we can blame it on the Koch brothers and charge them with "murder."

[Half-Century Man]

10. Manslaughter.

Callously allowing deaths for the motive of profit should be Man 1.
158,500,000 counts of manslaughter in the first degree (317,000,000/2).

[libdem4life]

11. Confirmed health nut for decades since reading Diet for a New America, circa the 1970s...and I sat

in the ante-room of a WalMart recently waiting for a friend I had driven there to shop, and 90%...I counted them...were overweight to obese. A very few older men and young teenagers were in the standard weight realm, but the rest were just plain fat. Sorry. And I am a Liberal and cheer for good health care, but the obesity and shocking diabetes epidemic...OP is being conservative...which is poor health, crap nutrition, fast foods, prepared garbage, $6-8 a pound chips/snacks ($1 for 3 oz for nutritionless Cheetos)...will ultimately break the system.

Michelle Obama got slammed when she tried to talk about fresh, healthy food. Agribusiness is the real Boogey Man behind Corporatism...followed only by Big Health care and Big Pharma. The average senior drags shopping bags full of prescriptions when they go to see their doctor...freaking shopping bags full. They all depend on each other. They eat crap, get sick, go to the doctor, get pills, pills, and more pills, sit in front of the TV, rinse and repeat.

I am a senior now and the shock when I disclose I don't have any pills to take (ok, one to help me sleep because I'm hyperactive). They don't believe me.

[Fridays Child]

14. Yes, the system will break.

And we (or our children and grandchildren) will all pay the price.

[libdem4life]

18. My son, thankfully carried through his vegan/vegetarian early years..even though rendered impossible

later by ex-hubby disagreement...soccer team to McDonald's in the Mommy vans...etc...got to pick your fights. But he still eats great, never sick, athletic and healthy, so I lucked out there.

His dad, as an ex and out from under dietary control, went back to overweight, became diabetic, had a heart attack, a stroke, high blood pressure...the whole nine yards. We both doubt he'll make it to 65...he was younger than I. Very sad.

[Spider Jerusalem]

12. Solutions:

1) stop driving everywhere and learn to use your legs for something besides filling your trousers.
2) stop eating enormous portions of everything.

[Fridays Child]

16. Your solutions seem rational.

Ultimately, though, they may not solve the problem. I don't necessarily have the answers but I think we will have to dig a lot deeper.

[ErikJ]

15. Steep Junk food tax needed--to CURB it and also to help PAY for it!

It seems obvious to me but unfortunately the junk food industry lobbyists are the most powerful in Washington and will fight it to death.

[Fridays Child]

17. You're right. It is pretty obvious.

Maybe your idea could be part of a solution that includes widespread public education and real help for families struggling to survive on minimum wage incomes. We will reach the tipping point of popular will necessary to generate change, when we can figure out how to set aside our differences and unite against the efforts of the "most powerful" that keep us too scared and too tired to fight back.

As long as we remain polarized, they win.

[libdem4life]

19. And thanks for the thread...every bit of info helps someone.

[Fridays Child]

20. You're welcome.

[pipoman]

21. Define "junk food" and how will it be assessed

and levied?

[liberal_at_heart]

28. oh, great. Make it so poor people can't afford any food. How about instead of taxing junk food

giving tax breaks for healthy food? That is a much better idea.

[jtuck004]

22. This says half of "adults" - not 50% of the country - just

to get clear what we are talking about

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Diabetes/diabetes-half-us-adults-risk-2020-unitedhealth-group/story?id=12238602

Still, that's an astounding figure, and probably means we have to push for walking and better eating now.

With the cuts in Social Security, and the rise in health care costs that the ACA aren't going to fix, this has the potential to be very much worse than most people imagine, I think.

[sense]

23. One solution

is to realize that Medicine is no longer about keeping people healthy. Take a pill for this or that, then take another and another for the side effects of the first ones, instead of eating real food. The ADA, AMA, AHA and other organizations continue to prescribe a diet high in carbs and processed foods instead of informing people that a high fat, medium protein, very low carb diet will result in a much reduced incidence of type 2 diabetes and other diseases.

Doctors in other countries are figuring out that we've been had. Here's a video by a doctor from Sweden who's getting it right and explains well how we were duped into our current diets and how it's killing us:

&list=PL9E35F689C3F67D03&index=1&feature=plpp_video

Read Gary Taube's "Good Calories, Bad Calories" for an in-depth look at the research into obesity and disease. Or you could read the more "user friendly" version "Why we get fat".

I had type 2 diabetes and cured it by doing the opposite of what my doctor advised when it became apparent that following her advice was only making things worse. Her solution was to continue to eat plenty of carbs and just take more and more medication. I fired her and now I'm well and take no medications, including no medications for high blood pressure as my blood pressure also came down with the weight loss that resulted from eating a high fat (good fats only), low carb diet.

The usual suspects on DU who always come into these threads to try to discredit anyone questioning the old and tired advice from the medical and pharmaceutical industries will soon arrive. They will cite the ancient, discredited "calories in, calories out crap and try to tell you that the first law of thermodynamics proves you can't eat more calories than you exercise away if you want to remain the same weight as proof that you must eat a low calorie diet to lose weight. The laws of thermodynamics only apply in closed systems and our bodies are not closed systems. We're very complicated machines, not a simple box.

[Fridays Child]

24. Great insight!

I will study your advice.

[eppur_se_muova]

25. Thermodynamics is often abused, especially by those who don't understand it ...

witness the ID crowd and their "evolution violates the 2nd law" crap (it doesn't, not even close).

TD can be useful for finding upper bounds and lower bounds -- the calories you ingest give an upper bound for how much you will metabolize, but there are many reasons you might not come close to that upper bound.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

26. Do you have a source for that statistic?

I'm not doubting you, but that is extremely high.

[Fridays Child]

27. Yes, it's shocking.

It's on the thumb drive provided to all attendees of the Second Annual Diabetes Symposium, at the University of Arizona, this fall.

As another poster pointed out, this probably refers to adults only. Although, from what I understand, type II is beginning to appear in children. Until recently, it was pretty much only type I that affected kids but even young metabolisms are having difficulty withstanding processed, high-carb, food.

Also, people who have poor access to effective health care may be part of an under-diagnosed population. I can imagine that many do not receive a diagnosis until they show up at hospitals for emergency care for heart conditions, wounds that won't heal, and so on. I also wonder how many people are diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, for example, but don't really understand what that means.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

29. Thanks for the reply ...

I'll have to look that up. I'm not quite sure I know what that means.

I've been fortunate, I suppose. I've been thin all my life, especially when I was younger, I was very much underweight. Though, for a guy, it can be somewhat of a bummer - now that I'm older, I've filled out, but in no danger of gaining weight, even though I eat like crazy.

I wonder if that syndrome works both ways? Forgive me, just woke up - so may not be thinking straight.