Posted 12:41 PM by Blah blah

Actually, Christine, I called your journal "Blog of the Business Plan!"

Diabetes

Today I'm gonna sound like your dad... Before you read the next article, kids, you'd better pig out on juicy T-bone steaks, pork chops, milk with 100% fat, and bread as white as a skinhead. Your last chance. After I'm through with you, you won't ever go near a burger joint or detach your butt from that exercise bike again! Repeat after me: "Guilt is good!"

I saw on TV that in Shanghai they even have a camp for overweight kids now. Although I'm the type of person who tries to eat everything (including the plastic wrapper), in recent months I've been cutting down on beef and pork. Boy is my blog sounding like a "test of the Emergency Broadcast System" or what???

Study links 'Western' diet, diabetes risk (Boston Globe):
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Men who consume a typical ''Western'' diet - red meat, refined grains, high-fat dairy products - are much more likely to develop diabetes than those whose diets center on vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fish and poultry, according to a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health.

The study followed more than 42,000 male health professionals for 12 years, tracking their self-reported eating habits and incidence of type 2 diabetes, which affects about 16 million Americans and is a leading cause of heart failure, kidney failure, blindness and other health problems.

The men whose diets most closely conformed to the Western model were 60 percent more likely to develop the disease than those who stuck closest to what researchers termed a ''prudent'' diet - even when adjusted for other factors that increase the risk of diabetes, such as smoking, a family history of the disease and a sedentary lifestyle.

People who ate lots of vegetables and other ''prudent'' foods in addition to large quantities of meat and dairy products reduced their risk, but not enough to counteract the effects of the Western diet. And the added risk from the ''Western'' diet as a whole was greater than the risk from any single food considered harmful, a finding the researchers called important because it reflects people's eating patterns rather than one unhealthy food.

''People should change their entire eating pattern, not just increase or decrease one nutrient or one food,'' said Frank Hu, an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and senior author of the paper published in today's issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. ''This is an important public health message.''

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Diabetes: Asia's Modern Scourge (Far Eastern Economic Review):

"High-calorie diets, lack of exercise and sedentary lifestyles are largely to blame. Traditional lifestyles and diets that have sustained people over generations are disappearing and Asians are starting to bulge at the waistline. In terms of sheer numbers, 'it's probably the biggest epidemic in history,' says Paul Zimmet, director of the International Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, noting that the disease affects roughly 150 million people worldwide. Even more disturbing is that the situation is expected to get much worse and the major burden will be born in Asia, where at least 60 million people suffer from diabetes. By 2025 that number is conservatively expected to double, the World Health Organization warns. India and China will be particularly hard hit (see chart).

Diabetes was uncommon in China before 1980 and affected less than 1% of the population in big cities and even fewer people in rural areas. Recent estimates for Shanghai and Beijing put the diabetes prevalence figure at about 6%. Both genetic and environmental factors cause the disease. Zimmet estimates between 95% and 98% of all cases have a genetic component.

Experts believe that Indian, Malay, Chinese and Polynesian ethnic groups have a genetic predisposition to develop the disease. Some experts believe these populations have what is called the 'thrifty gene'--a gene that historically enabled them to cope with prolonged periods of starvation by storing surplus sugars as fat. Now that these ethnic groups have ready access to food, the theory goes, and with modernization get less exercise, individuals with these genes have a greater susceptibility to diabetes.' "
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Hmmm, I like that---"thrifty gene." Now when my friends tell me I'm stingy, I can just say, "It's not me. It's my DNA, BABY!"