Reversing obesity and diabetes: let’s start somewhere

            Obesity and type 2 diabetes are rampant epidemics and getting worse. The projection of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is frightening: half of Americans will have one or both conditions by 2050. Obesity is a major factor in type 2 diabetes; both have crippling and expensive complications that we cannot afford individually or as a nation. As the cost of healthcare premiums for the average family climbs well past $1,000 per month, draconian laws, shortages and even rationing of health care are inevitable.

            A century ago obesity affected approximately 5 percent of our population and type 2 diabetes occurred only in the elderly, who were relatively few in number at that time. Both conditions have complex causes but there is no question that two of them, the sedentary lifestyle and the high intake of ordinary sugar, top the list. If we could bring just those two factors back to 1913 levels the contribution of genetics, fatty foods, refined flour, etc. could be temporarily ignored and the results would still be dramatic.

            Inducing adults to become more physically active is a hard sell, so we should concentrate on getting our kids to move more. One hour a day of moderately intense sports or play has been shown to lower the future likelihood of obesity and type 2 diabetes and it will protect them from osteoporosis in later life.

            Possibly the most effective route to getting us back to the last century’s levels of thinness and health is to dramatically lower our intake of sugar, especially in soft drinks. We drank 5 times as much sweetened drinks in 2000 as we did in 1950. Although HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup) gets the blame it is only slightly different from sucrose, ordinary table sugar. Fructose is a bad actor, no doubt, but it’s our overall intake of

 sugar – 40 times as much as our colonial forefathers – that is killing us

            The mandate by the mayor of New York City that limits sugary soft drink servings to only 16 ounces is noble but anger-inducing, a rule that has so many loopholes and ill-considered consequences that its wide-scale application is doomed. It makes more sense to remove sugar subsidies and instead to tax the stuff at the wholesale level so that all sugar-containing foods become more expensive and less attractive.

            This sounds too simple, of course. But maybe it would work. Something had better.