DIABETES - TYPE II EPIDEMIC

What’s behind this epidemic? How can you prevent it?

Type II diabetes has reached epidemic proportions in the United States and around the globe. What has led to this? There’s really no mystery. There have been a number of trends in our society, especially in the US, that have led inevitably toward this situation.
Consider that news headlines almost weekly have something to report concerning obesity, especially among children. When the number of super-sized fast food meals exceeds the number of minimally processed home-cooked meals week after week, the result is to be expected. Add to this the trend toward more and more time spent on the phone, in front of the television or playing video games, and less time spent outdoors playing, riding bikes, shooting hoops or exploring, what else could we expect? Now we see a nation of middle age adults and baby boomers who get even less exercise than their children, sitting in front of the television every night with a remote glued to their hand, and we wonder what has gone wrong. We eat over processed food that provides less than adequate nutrition, we walk the equivalent of about 100 yards a day, we park as close to the store as possible, ride elevators and avoid stairs, and use every possible excuse to avoid physical activity of any sort. There seems to be general agreement that obesity and inactivity may both contribute to the onset of type II diabetes for many. But even with all these factors at work against us, there is something else we might have missed…another factor that is far less obvious, but perhaps far more deadly.

Go right now to your food pantry or your refrigerator and look at a few food labels. Look for the words, “partially hydrogenated…….”. If you don’t see that, then look for “shortening”. After you’ve done this tiny bit of personal research, come back and read the rest of this. I’ll wait. . . . . . . . . .

What did you find? If you have cookies or crackers or just about any other baked goods on your shelf, you’ve got this stuff in your house. These are TRANS FATTY ACIDS. We’ll refer to them as TFA’s here. The reason we find them in so many processed foods is because they help keep the food product “fresh”. Instead of going bad in a week to ten days, it might still appear to be edible in ten MONTHS! Great, right? Well, if you are a food manufacturer, yes. You can now make your product in Maine in January and ship it to California and know that when it finally gets on the shelf at the local convenience store it will still look great in April.

Do you have a can of shortening (no brand names here) on your shelf. THAT is a can of trans fatty acids. Partially hydrogenated oil. You can keep this stuff for five years and it won’t go “bad”. But YOU will go bad. Here’s the scoop on TFA’s. Your body has no good use for TFA’s. It cannot digest TFA’s. In fact the safe adult daily intake of trans fatty acids is ZERO milligrams. The TFA’s actually harden the cell walls, making it harder for your cells to absorb nutrients or excrete waste. They also make it harder for your cells to communicate with each other. That’s right! So if you get a little infection over here, and you need a little help from over there, the message doesn’t get through. Like the cavalry in the fort under attack by a band of Indians, you send out a rider to get help from another fort. But he can’t get out the gate, so you’re on your own.
Infection gets worse, spreads, and soon you have a serious medical problem. TFA’s seem to be directly linked to heart disease too. Back in the 50’s we were told to stop eating butter. Switch to margarine!!! Hmm. What is margarine? Partially hydrogenated oil, with a little sodium and coloring and a few other tidbits, so it looks and tastes a little like butter. As the use of margarine and shortening in the home and in food manufacturing increased, along with the spread of our interstate highway system, the incidence of heart disease went…UP, not down. We took the advice of the medical community and made ourselves more vulnerable to illness.

What’s the solution? YOU are. If you buy food, read the label. If it says “partially hydrogenated”….anything, don’t buy it. Is it really that simple? No. You will find
it quite difficult to find ANY label in the cookie and cracker aisle that doesn’t have those words on it. But you can get some really great cookie recipes that use applesauce that you can make at home, with no TFA’s. (here are just a couple of URL’s to get you started)
www.baking911.com/healthy/baking_101.htm
http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/low-fat-baking3.htm

Oh, I know, we just don’t have time to bake cookies any more. But we are killing ourselves, so baking seems like a good alternative, doesn’t it? The more we avoid consuming highly processed foods, the healthier we can be. And it’s not just cookies and crackers that we need to watch out for. It is prepared foods of all sorts. Buy a prepared meatloaf, or some of that delicious lasagna in the frozen food case. Or maybe read the label and then go home and make your own.

Will this alone help you avoid type II diabetes? Perhaps not. But if you are willing to do this much, perhaps you will also be willing to take a little walk, 30 or 40 minutes, a few times a week. Maybe you will also learn something about portion control. And maybe by exercising some self-control we can turn this epidemic around. Good health to you.