Forget 2012--let's look at 2025

If you're worried about a coming apocalypse in 2012, you might want to look instead at what you ate today. Media hype about the Mayan Long Count Calendar pointing to a global cataclysm and propagandist films like Roland Emmerich's 2012 can easily distract us from focusing on what is truly an encroaching global disaster: our diet. The foods we choose to consume are slowly contributing to a global epidemic that will not come with a cataclysmic bang but a slow debilitating disease: Diabetes.

A diabetic individual may (type 1) not be able to produce insulin at all or (type 2) produces insulin in amounts that are inefficient (either too much or too little). Insulin is the key hormone/protein which assists in transforming glucose into energy. When glucose/sugar continually remains in the bloodstream without getting processed, the kidneys, heart, nerves, eyes can become damaged. People die not from "diabetes" but from "complications from diabetes." It is a complex disease that affects various areas of the body making it a serious and crippling disease.

An article in the journal Diabetes Care explains that "The number of adults with diabetes in the world is estimated to increase by 122 percent, from 135 million in 1995 to 300 million in 2025 . . . Without sustained and cooperative education and government outreach, the prevalence of diabetes will reach epidemic proportions by 2025."

This serious increase in diabetes is due (1) to the global corporatization of pre-processed foods (very high in sucrose and fats) and (2) a sedentary lifestyle. Easy to fix you may say--just eat organic local foods and move your body. Easy for those who can afford organic, locally grown food. When McDonalds or KFC is offering dollar meals while a pound of organic green beans is $3.50 and you've got a family of 2, 3, or 4 and you're working two jobs and don't have time to cook--which are you going to choose?

I think about this and wonder--how did we get to this point in our global society? The media and Hollywood may advertise the coming of 2012 but I fear what we have become right now in 2009. There IS hope!! I don't want to sound so dire. There ARE many many people/organizations who are questioning AND doing something about our pre-processed and sedentary world. And when I say "sedentary" I do not mean laziness. I am thinking of people in factory jobs who are sitting or standing and doing the same "action" over and over (wrapping, cutting, stuffing, inspecting) but not working/exercising their whole body. I am also thinking of our children--the next generations who are already so addicted to their computers, video games, i-phones, i-pods, wii---that they are loathe to take a walk, to eat a home-cooked meal.

Sooo--I am including here, a number of books on this subject if you want to join me in working toward a non-preprocessed, active world! Forget 2012. Let's prevent a diabetic epidemic in 2025!

1. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

2. The Omnivore's Dilemma for Kids: The Secrets Behind What You Eat by Michael Pollan

3. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

4. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

5. My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki

6. Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should be Good, Clean, and Fair by Carlo Petrini

If you have a favorite book that is not on this short list, please share!

Happy healthy eating and exercising to you all!!

p.s.

If you click on the book Eating Animals, check out author Jonathan Safran

Foer's two-minute description of his book--picture below--on Amazon, you can

hear it.