

Sugar Rush: The progress of a disease over thirty years - nopinsight
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/diabetes

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gregwebs
I was pleasantly surprised to see this called "Sugar Rush"- making it appear
to be common sense to keep your blood sugar levels low if you have diabetes.
Yet the ADA (American Diabetes Association) tells everyone to eat low-fat
(high-carb) diets.

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extension
I'm always suspicious of "percent change" data that isn't supplemented with
absolute values. If there was a big change for the worse, does that mean they
used to be good and are now normal or that they used to be normal and are now
bad? And is the value high enough to even make the change meaningful? You have
the same problem with any other change. It just seems to raise more questions
than it answers.

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wycats
You can get some raw data from Wolfram Alpha:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=United+States%2C+United...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=United+States%2C+United+Kingdom%2C+Canada%2C+Russia%2C+France+|+diabetes)

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nobody_nowhere
Always surprised to see how diabetes coverage in the popular press blurs the
difference between Type I ("juvenile") and Type II ("adult onset").

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dsharp
I totally agree, but I think calling Type 1 "juvenile" is misleading as well.
My wife developed Type 1 when she was in her twenties.

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wycats
Similarly, it's become possible for children to become Type II diabetics,
which coincides with a massive increase in obesity (probably both caused by a
root cause).

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hysterix
Would just like to quickly comment here and say that the prevalence of corn
based additives in nearly all american foods is a major, if not the main
culprit in this problem. The many corn aliases disguise themselves, so that
people who avoid "high fructose corn syrup", find themselves consuming not
glucose but a corn derivative none the less:

Ascorbic acid derived from glucose

Crystalline fructose

Dextrin or Dextrose

Ethyl maltol

Fumaric or Lactic acid

Glucose

Hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP)

Malt, Maltodextrin, Maltose or Maltol

Mannitol

Polydextrose

Polysorbates

Potassium gluconate

Propylene glycol monostearate

Tocopherol

Xanthan gum

And of course all these ingredients are used in abundance because they are
cheap, and of course all these corn derivatives are cheap because of corn
subsidies, and of course there are subsidies because of the massive amount of
corn lobbyists and such.

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int3rnaut
These findings lead me to further believe something I have long
suspected...Since 1980, the Women of Canada have not abided by the rules of
halfsies. Stop eating my skittles, ladies. :(

In all seriousness, why do you think there's a noticeable difference between
Canadian men and women according to this data? I mean from the looks of it
most, countries Mens numbers were higher.

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mitcheme
And as a sidenote, if you look at e.g., Africa, you can see women's rates are
going up faster in many countries, and in fact globally:

"Across the world the rate of diabetes rose by 18% for men and by 23% for
women"

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int3rnaut
I mean from a straightforward point of view you can understand the rise on a
worldly basis just because of the progression of women's rights around the
globe--but when you look at Canada what's changed since the late 70's to the
point where women are taking in increased sugars?

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mitcheme
A lot has changed Canada since the late 1970s, which is why I say you'd need
more information than just that little map or even stats of the kind I got off
statscan. You could probably come up with a half-dozen stories why that fit
the map data, but that wouldn't mean they were right.

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dr_
It would be interesting to see if smoking among the French, particularly
French women, coincided with a drop in rates of diabetes.

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ovi256
I'm pretty sure smoking rates dropped in France too. It's just that they were
always pretty high. So no global correlation there.

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dochtman
The difference between North America and Western Europe is quite striking. Is
that really mostly due to HFCS?

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klbarry
Almost certainly due to lower obesity rates, rather than the negligible
difference between normal sugar and HFCS.

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grannyg00se
Fructose is much more damaging than glucose. So HFCS is much more damaging
than regular sugar (glucose-fructose). And more importantly, the widespread
use of HFCS is a major concern. It's too cheap, it's too legal, and it's a
toxin. There's absolutely no use for it in our bodies.

Yes, obesity is the problem. HFCS can be blamed as a significant contributor
to the obesity issue.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM>

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wycats
HFCS and regular sugar have a very similar proportion of glucose:fructose.

The kind of HFCS used in soft drinks is 55% fructose and 42% glucose, while
sucrose (sugar) is 50% fructose and 50% glucose. The kind of HFCS used in
baked products is 42% fructose and 53% glucose.

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quattrofan
Lets hear it for High Fructose Corn Syrup!

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zwieback
What's going on in Spain?

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narag
I guess a lot of people is abandoning traditional "mediterranean diet", but
not to adopt something healthier.

