Make the Connections: Poverty, Obesity, and Diabetes

How to fight diabetes with better policy—and cut your own diabetes risk by 93 percent.
Just the Facts 63


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

Click here for more articles from , the Fall 2012 issue of YES! Magazine.

  • What happens when the Motor City transforms itself into the capital of grow-your-own food?

  • A storyteller asks what you'd do if you knew your body was part of the water web.

  • The new science that explains how politics, economics, and ecology can help or hurt our bodies, and how we can fix an unhealthy world.