Interactive map of diabetes rates in the US, fired chicken anyone? http://labs.slate.com/articles/diabetes-in-america/
Aren't the increases in diabetes incidence mostly due to changing the goalposts for what is diagnosed as diabetes?
What's going on in the four corners area? It's a pin wheel of differing diabetes percentages. Though it could help tourism, create a tour of four 'opposing' restaurants, each in their respective state, and tie it all together with a mascot guide of some sort...
I blame the CIA and that Robot Abe Lincoln Walt Disney had built back in the Fifties. They're spreading diabeetus to punish and enslave the South. And to keep them from Rising Again.
Isn't the rate of diabetes higher among blacks than whites in any case? Not having lived in the areas shown on the map, are those areas with a much higher percentage of blacks?
Roger that, if you are referring to The South. You can's swing a cat here in Augusta without hitting an obese black missing one or more limbs from diabetes amputations. My wife has diabetes and she is keeping it under control pretty well. But if I didn't have access to good affordable health care (as per many Southern blacks) that could treat diabetes, I would eat healthier so it doesn't get to that point! No Little Debbie snack is worth losing a limb!
That and the Four Corners region are a product of the Injun populations. Native folk worldwide have a problem processing the carbs and processed sugars found in the Western Diet.
Oooh... Since it would be clearly racist to gin up a map, showing the crime rate, compared to the black population, could we do one correlating crime to diabeetus?
My cousin just ran a medical study in the Memphis area (last spring was when it concluded. IT had been going on a long time) which was trying to ascertain why blacks are 2x as likely to get diabetes in this area as whites.
They're bodies are not adapted to the Western Diet, (carbs, processed sugars, etc) since they've been eating it for less time than white Europeans. Pick up a copy of Michael Pollan's In Defense Of Food and knock yourself out.
The cutoff for a diagnosis of diabetes was lowered from a fasting glucose level of 140 to 125 about 20 years ago. Geography wouldn't affect that. Type 2 diabetes (a different disease from type 1) is a result of a constellation of genetic and lifestyle factors. It is more prevalent in people of color than in whites, and Native populations are particularly vulnerable, followed by Latinos and blacks (with a 70% higher incidence than whites), with whites and Asian Americans just about tied. (I wrote "Asian Americans" deliberately because, until recently, Asians in Asia had very low incidences of diabetes, but as the Western diet creeps inexorably east, so does the diabetes rate. As for Native Americans, the spike in the Four Corners region reflects the Navajo and Hopi populations.) There are some people who can stuff their faces with greasy food and sweet stuff all their lives and never develop diabetes. That's good genes. The rest of us, particularly anyone with a family history, need to be more careful. As for the South, in addition to the higher incidence of diabetes (Step away from the donuts, Bubba), there's what doctors affectionately refer to as the Stroke Belt: http://www.strokecenter.org/patients/stats.htm#Charts Diabetes will kill you slowly. A stroke may kill you, or simply leave you incapacitated for the last 20 years of your life. Do y'all really need to deep-fry everything?
Compare that map to poverty rates. Basically a one for one comparison. Blacks in the Black Belt and MS Basin, whites in Appalachians, and then large Indian Reservations in West. The only large ethno-geographic grouping that doesn't appear on both is Hispanics along the Rio Grande (which appears in the poverty map but not the Diabetis one). And since you said you enjoy maps, here's another interesting correlation:
The Mexican grocery store strikes again. The difference is cultural, showing that poverty is not the only excuse. ie, Mexicans still eat real food.
And since we're playing with maps, here are a few related to so-called "food deserts": http://foodmapper.wordpress.com/200...ents-to-local-food-part-i-rural-food-deserts/
Not a bad post, but the author never addressed the role that regulations and subsidies play in creating food deserts. In other words, lots of farmers would grow and sell lots of different things if market access wasn't burdened prohibitive regulations. Something recent "food safety" legislation will only exacerbate. Though I admit, technically living in such a desert, the marketing possibilities excite me.
I wonder about the whole diabetes thing myself. My doc diagnosed me with it back in 2007 and I ain't really changed my eating habits at all and always pass the a1c test with flying colors. Seriously, when I was first diagnosed, I really cut back, but here lately I have been eating ice cream and cake and my numbers are better than when I was eating rice cakes. I'm thinking more people are being called diabetic because there is money in it.
Yep, no true Hispanic woman worth her salt will "cook" microwave dinners every night. I think every woman in my family can cook something different every day of the month, no problem. The men, on the other hand :santa_grin: they'd starve without us
I actually lost a lot of weight one time eating nothing but fried chicken (either fresh or left over, I prefer it cold) and coffee.