When I read this article at the Wall Street Journal on how the number of cases of diabetes in China has increased ten-fold over the period of the last thirty years three thoughts occurred to me.
- Can you really believe official Chinese statistics from 30 years ago? They probably had quotas for the number of cases of diabetes they could report.
- Is the incidence of diabetes increasing or is there just more detection of diabetes?
- Is a predisposition to diabetes an adaptation to circumstances of frequent intermittent famine?
Just as an aside a lot of the earlier research on the benefits of a low fat diet relied on statistics from China.
“Is a predisposition to diabetes an adaptation to circumstances of frequent intermittent famine?”
Possibly. It certainly appears so for Native Americans in the Southwest.