Make the Connections: Poverty, Obesity, and Diabetes

How to fight diabetes with better policy:

1. Combat poverty
   

   People who make $15,000 or less are three times more likely to have diabetes than people who make $50,000 or more, regardless of race.

2. End junk food subsidies
   

   Between 1985 and 2010 the price of beverages sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup dropped 24%, while the price  of fresh fruits and vegetables rose 39%.

Do 4 things to cut your risk of diabetes by 93%:

1. Eat healthy
   

   The lowest rates of Type 2 diabetes in the world occur in populations consuming a whole foods, plant-based diet.

2. Lose weight

3. Exercise
   

   Overweight people walking 150 minutes a week can reduce the risk of developing diabetes by nearly 60%.

4. Stop smoking

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Click here for more articles from It's Your Body, the Fall 2012 issue of YES! Magazine.

• The Good Food Cure
  What happens when the Motor City transforms itself into the capital of grow-your-own food?
• Your Body, of Water
  A storyteller asks what you'd do if you knew your body was part of the water web.
  
• Why Your Health Is Bigger Than Your Body
  The new science that explains how politics, economics, and ecology can help or hurt our bodies, and how we can fix an unhealthy world.
  

Sources

• Spending on weight loss products.

• Graph of obesity rates.

• CDC diabetes graph.

• 1 in 10 adults have diabetes...

• Poverty and diabetes correlation.

• Price of high-fructose corn syrup vs. fruits and vegetables.

• 93% reduction in risk of diabetes.