5 ms·

I'm all in favour of extra therapeutic options. But what jumped out at me was that 1 in 11 people worldwide have some form of diabetes. This is surely a relat

I'm all in favour of extra therapeutic options. But what jumped out at me was that 1 in 11 people worldwide have some form of diabetes. This is surely a relatively new state of affairs so wouldn't it be a rather good idea to prevent it at source so to say rather than cope with the negative effects?

adastra22 1y ago
What do you suggest? Free access to Ozempic? The real underlying reason for this is quite simple: Haber-Bosch enables us to have abundant and cheap food for everyone, and our evolutionary history hasn't wired us up to respond appropriately to that.
- CGMthrowaway 1y ago
  >Free access to Ozempic? How does that "prevent it at source"? I was going to say "free access to meat and eggs" and then I read the rest of your comment. You are blaming metabolic dysfunction on the people setting low prices for food, did I read that right?
  - quickthrowman 1y ago
    There’s not a surplus of meat and eggs anywhere. There are vast surpluses of all grains due to the Haber-Bosch process and the Green Revolution, plus national security concerns. Therefore, grains are cheap, everything is pumped full of salt and sugar, and people eat overeat. Also, famines were semi-regular occurrences across the world until very recently. Your idea would work if meat and eggs took fewer resources to produce, but reality does not work like that.
    - JDEW 1y ago
      > Therefore, grains are cheap and people eat too much of them. People only overeat themselves into obesity once you process those carbs into high fructose corn syrup etc. Seems like a very different problem.
      - adastra22 1y ago
        High fructose corn syrup is very likely one of the reasons American's health is significantly worse than other nations. However the entire globe is suffering from the obesity epidemic, not just the USA. There are regions of the world that are doing better than others, and a wide spectrum of reasons for that, but it is only comparative/relative improvement. Obesity is getting worse everywhere, across the board, as people are uplifted into middle class incomes and able to purchase and eat whatever they want & as much as they want.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
        deaux 1y ago
        > There are regions of the world that are doing better than others It maps about 1:1 with the amount of sugary, fatty, addictive shit they're consuming. Across the globe. So do the trends. Prime example being the rising obesity rates in countries like Japan and Korea, rising at the exact same pace as the supply and consumption of above crap in those countries. They still have lower obesity rates than much of the West, at roughly the same relative difference of the amount of such crap consumed.
        adastra22 1y ago
        Obesity is rising everywhere except places experiencing war-torn famine. Even Bhutan has increasing waistlines. It's only a matter of how bad it is getting, how fast.
- JDEW 1y ago
  To blame abundant food for obesity and not the fact that we make everything ultra addictive [0] seems like inverse logic to me. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-025-01143-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-025-01143-7
  - adastra22 1y ago
    Then why do we have a growing obesity epidemic in countries that DON'T have nearly as many problems with ultra-processed food? Southern Europe, Japan, and India are usually held as exemplar countries with very good natural food culture. All of them are struggling with increasing obesity. I'm not saying that ultra-processed foods are fine. They are bad and very much part of the story. But it is not the whole story either.
    - markdown 1y ago
      You haven't been to India, have you? The capitalist push to get every Indian eating addictive junk (most commonly with the use of sugar) is as aggressive as it is anywhere else in the world.
      - estimator7292 1y ago
        "I'm going to dismiss all of your counterexamples because I have an example you didn't mention"
        BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
        India was one of the examples?
        deaux 1y ago
        This is really the worst situation to apply this logic to, as the "counterexample" he mentioned applies to every single one of the regions mentioned by GP.
      - shlant 1y ago
- jimkri 1y ago
  I would say taking a supplement like Spirulina and Chlorella is a start; there is research showing the benefits: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8212205/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8212205/ This is a simple behavior shift; it can help people begin making other behavior changes to help improve their health overall.
IAmBroom 1y ago
That's not a novel idea. The purpose of medicine is twofold: to prevent and to cure. We shouldn't stop making medicines and therapies, and only investigate prevention of diseases.

adastra22 1y ago

What do you suggest? Free access to Ozempic? The real underlying reason for this is quite simple: Haber-Bosch enables us to have abundant and cheap food for everyone, and our evolutionary history hasn't wired us up to respond appropriately to that.

CGMthrowaway 1y ago
>Free access to Ozempic? How does that "prevent it at source"? I was going to say "free access to meat and eggs" and then I read the rest of your comment. You are blaming metabolic dysfunction on the people setting low prices for food, did I read that right?
- quickthrowman 1y ago
  There’s not a surplus of meat and eggs anywhere. There are vast surpluses of all grains due to the Haber-Bosch process and the Green Revolution, plus national security concerns. Therefore, grains are cheap, everything is pumped full of salt and sugar, and people eat overeat. Also, famines were semi-regular occurrences across the world until very recently. Your idea would work if meat and eggs took fewer resources to produce, but reality does not work like that.
  - JDEW 1y ago
    > Therefore, grains are cheap and people eat too much of them. People only overeat themselves into obesity once you process those carbs into high fructose corn syrup etc. Seems like a very different problem.
    - adastra22 1y ago
      High fructose corn syrup is very likely one of the reasons American's health is significantly worse than other nations. However the entire globe is suffering from the obesity epidemic, not just the USA. There are regions of the world that are doing better than others, and a wide spectrum of reasons for that, but it is only comparative/relative improvement. Obesity is getting worse everywhere, across the board, as people are uplifted into middle class incomes and able to purchase and eat whatever they want & as much as they want.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - deaux 1y ago
        > There are regions of the world that are doing better than others It maps about 1:1 with the amount of sugary, fatty, addictive shit they're consuming. Across the globe. So do the trends. Prime example being the rising obesity rates in countries like Japan and Korea, rising at the exact same pace as the supply and consumption of above crap in those countries. They still have lower obesity rates than much of the West, at roughly the same relative difference of the amount of such crap consumed.
        adastra22 1y ago
        Obesity is rising everywhere except places experiencing war-torn famine. Even Bhutan has increasing waistlines. It's only a matter of how bad it is getting, how fast.
JDEW 1y ago
To blame abundant food for obesity and not the fact that we make everything ultra addictive [0] seems like inverse logic to me. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-025-01143-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-025-01143-7
- adastra22 1y ago
  Then why do we have a growing obesity epidemic in countries that DON'T have nearly as many problems with ultra-processed food? Southern Europe, Japan, and India are usually held as exemplar countries with very good natural food culture. All of them are struggling with increasing obesity. I'm not saying that ultra-processed foods are fine. They are bad and very much part of the story. But it is not the whole story either.
  - markdown 1y ago
    You haven't been to India, have you? The capitalist push to get every Indian eating addictive junk (most commonly with the use of sugar) is as aggressive as it is anywhere else in the world.
    - estimator7292 1y ago
      "I'm going to dismiss all of your counterexamples because I have an example you didn't mention"
      - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
        India was one of the examples?
      - deaux 1y ago
        This is really the worst situation to apply this logic to, as the "counterexample" he mentioned applies to every single one of the regions mentioned by GP.
    - shlant 1y ago
jimkri 1y ago
I would say taking a supplement like Spirulina and Chlorella is a start; there is research showing the benefits: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8212205/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8212205/ This is a simple behavior shift; it can help people begin making other behavior changes to help improve their health overall.

IAmBroom 1y ago

That's not a novel idea. The purpose of medicine is twofold: to prevent and to cure. We shouldn't stop making medicines and therapies, and only investigate prevention of diseases.