Respondent: Obesity and Diabetes

The two readings we had for the week regarding obesity and diabetes were particularly interesting to me considering that diabetes as well as obesity runs in my family at an alarming rate. According to the reading, the trends in diabesity are expected to continue because “contemporary environments are conducive to a surfeit of calories and fat stores” which can be due to the “hallmarks of global dietary modernization” such as “...processed energy dense foods, increased quantity and increased ingestion frequency."(85) All these traits hold true especially in more developed countries such as the United States where a large percentage of the population are obese as well as diabetic, and trends increasing with childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes.

I can completely agree with Paige where she states that “in a modern world, where food variety is common, sedentism is habitual and the neurological stimulation of physiological hunger is nearly ongoing, the diabesity statistics makes sense.” As other people in their blogs have mentioned, if they see that they have more food surrounding them or have enough money to buy more, people will go buy and consume food despite the fact that they might not actually be hungry.  They’re just satisfying those pleasurable senses associated with eating certain foods despite the fact that they’re increasing their risk for weight gain, especially if there is no physical activity that follows such eating. Sometimes we just believe that we’re hungry, or we can fit more food than what actually is a suggested serving size because of that “lack of sensitivity to internal cues of satiation” and our reliance of what we see in particular.

In contrast to what she believed was most interesting to her, reading into the specific statistics of diabetes was what truly interested me. In chapter 3 under “The Scope of the Problem: Diabetes Global Prevalence”, it was stated that “many small island populations have the highest prevalence estimates of type 2 diabetes.” (85) After learning about how type 2 diabetes tends to increase with countries that undergo rapid demographic changes and become increasingly more industrialized and urban, I figured that the populations with highest prevalence of diabetes would be in the most developed countries, which were also indicated (USA, India, China).  I want to think that perhaps it’s due to these regions not being as populated that perhaps the prevalence percentages would increase. In addition, these regions appear to be more influenced by tourism, which leads to certain areas of the region to be more urbanized and have led to a similar trend as what is going on in the United States with access to processed foods.

I feel that the readings remind us that diabesity is a growing epidemic that severely needs to be addressed, and despite that it cannot be cured it will help prevent further increasing rates of prevalence.