undefined

Just as Fast Food Nation appalled thousands of readers into boycotting McDonalds and its ilk, one can hope that Diabesity might galvanize the public to help prevent a mind-bogglingly huge epidemic from snowballing. Type II es used to be a disease of the elderly; in 1997, the American es Association decided to do away with the term "adult-onset es," as it increasingly appeared in middle-aged patients, young adults, and teens. It's now appearing in obese children, and affects nearly 10 percent of the American population;[p. 13] what's most unbelievable is that its prevalence nearly doubled between 1990 and 2002, and shows no signs of abating, as every overweight American--that's 64 percent of the population--is at elevated risk. Diabesity will likely petrify anyone recently diagnosed with es into scrupulously monitoring their blood-sugar level, with frightening stories of blindness, heart attacks, kidney failure, gangrene, impotence in males, and infertility in females, and other side effects from ics' elevated blood sugar. Dr. Kaufman gets a little full of herself when she describes audiences—from school boards to World Organization assemblies—going wild after her speeches on es. But as a pediatric endocrinologist since the 1970s, she's seen first-hand the rise of the es epidemic, with children appearing in her Los Angeles emergency room with blood-sugar levels 10 times what's considered y, so high that they can't be read with present-day equipment. Curiously absent in Diabesity is any mention of the potential link between infant formula and the later development of es. But Kaufman wins points for chronicling the fight to have L.A. ban soda sales in the schools. ("Sodas are the leading source of added sugar in children's diets.") Her descriptions of the cultural and economic differences among the es epidemics in China, India, and Ecuador are also intriguing. The book should be considered essential for parents, teachers, and day-care providers; it's grim reading, but that's a small sacrifice compared to a life being cut short 20 years by a largely preventable disease. --Erica Jorgensen