Who needs a healthy populace rich in well-being when you can have trillions in annual corporate profits?
The destruction caused by decay is just as catastrophic as the destruction wrought by calamity. The difference is we don’t notice the decay until it’s too late. When a wood-frame house is knocked down by a hurricane, earthquake or bulldozer, we are stunned and mortified by the destruction. But when termites or dry-rot eat away the framing for years until the house collapses, no single event triggers a response: we set aside evidence of the eventual negative consequences and reckon we can deal with it later.
The collapse of Americans’ health has proceeded in much the same fashion. According to Diabetes in 1964: A World Survey, the global rate of diagnosed diabetes in 1964 was estimated to be around 1% to 2%. In the US, 1% of the populace was diagnosed with diabetes (11 diagnosed cases per 1,000 people), and an estimated 8 cases per 1,000 were as yet undiagnosed.
Recall that “Type 1 diabetes is typically found in children and makes up roughly 5% of all diabetes cases. Its cause is unknown. Type 2 diabetes makes up approximately 95% of diabetes cases and is more common in adults.” ( source)
In other words, the vast majority of diabetes cases are caused by lifestyle factors such as diet, fitness and sociological / cultural changes rather than solely by genetics.
Today, 10% of the American populace has been diagnosed with diabetes and another 3-4% or estimated to be undiagnosed. This is an astounding ten-fold increase in diagnosed cases. In raw numbers, there were 2 million diabetics in the US in 1964 when the population was 194 million, and today there are over 37 million diabetics in a population of 330 million.
Today, the global rate of diabetes is around 10%, also roughly ten-fold the 1964 rate. Statistics vary, but Diabetes Rates by Country 2023 lists both the U.S. and China at an 11% rate of diabetes. (As noted, an additional percentage may have diabetes but have not yet been diagnosed.)
The number of adult Americans who are prediabetic, i.e. at risk of developing diabetes as a result of metabolic disorders, is estimated to be 38%. So more than half of America’s adult population is diabetic or prediabetic.
