Food For Life Diabetes: Understanding Type 2 Diabetes AND Designing a Diet for Maximum Weight Control (1)

The Food for Life: Diabetes Initiative is the plant-based nutrition and cooking program for type 2 diabetes prevention and treatment developed by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. The intended audience for this program is people with diabetes, prediabetes, a family history or risk factors for developing diabetes, and their adult family members. It is also designed to introduce health care professionals to the basics of plant-based nutrition for preventing and treating diabetes.Diabetes is a major public health problem of epidemic proportions. More than 12 percent of the U.S. adult population has diabetes, and more than one-quarter of the population over 65 has the disease. One out of four people with diabetes is unaware they have it, which means they are not being treated with a healthy diet or medications. Uncontrolled, diabetes can lead to complications from head to toe, including stroke, loss of vision, heart disease, kidney failure, and various problems due to nerve damage and circulatory problems, such as erectile dysfunction or lower-extremity amputation.An even greater number of people have prediabetes (impaired fasting glucose, impaired glucose tolerance, or both), which mean they are at high risk for developing diabetes. With prediabetes, blood glucose levels are higher than normal, but not yet high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. There are 86 million people in the United States who have prediabetes and they are generally without symptoms. Recent re-search has shown that some long-term damage to the body, especially the heart and circulatory system, may already be occurring during prediabetes. A blood test is used to diagnose prediabetes. Fifteen to thirty percent of people with prediabetes will develop diabetes within five years. Healthful diet and weight loss can prevent or delay this onset.