Health Tip: How You Can Avoid Adult-Onset Diabetes

Over the last decade, Health Sciences Institute (HSI) tells us, the number of Americans diagnosed with diabetes increased by 50%. Today, 17 million Americans have diabetes. That number will increase to 22 million in three years. Not coincidentally, there was a major jump in obesity rates during the same period. The number of super-fat Americans increased by 57%.

The link between obesity and adult-onset diabetes is clear. What hasn’t been so clear until recently, however, is the link between obesity and the consumption of starch and sugar. The average American eats 152 pounds of sugar each year. Some of that sugar is in processed and preserved foods in the form of sucrose, corn syrup, caramel color, or fructose.

And some of it is in pasta and other refined carbohydrates that turn into sugar in your body. “The sad fact,” HSI publisher Jenny Thompson says, “is that simply following a normal American diet can put us at risk of developing Type II diabetes.” And how do you avoid it? Cut way back on foods with a high glycemic index (that’s a measure of the rate at which a carbohydrate will enter the bloodstream as glucose).

This includes alcohol, refined sugar, white bread, white rice, pastry, pasta, potatoes, carrots, corn, fruit drinks, etc. Eat plenty of protein — lean or fat — and low-glycemic vegetables (all the dark-green, leafy ones). It’s that simple. Click here: http://www.agora-inc.com/reports/HSI/WHSID177

[Ed. Note.  Mark Morgan Ford was the creator of Early To Rise. In 2011, Mark retired from ETR and now writes the Palm Beach Letter. His advice, in our opinion, continues to get better and better with every essay, particularly in the controversial ones we have shared today. We encourage you to read everything you can that has been written by Mark.]