Diabetes and heart disease go hand in hand. Both are caused by a poor diet and little exercise. Unfortunately, with Physical Education in our schools being drastically reduced, the latter is very difficult for most student who are not on sports teams to actually get. The food pyramid is also a problem. The newer one is better than the original, but the first one caused great harm to everyone who followed it. The problem is that the bottom row consisted of breads and cereals, both of which are very high glycemic (glycemic index is how fast carbohydrates turn into blood sugar and glycemic load measures how many carbohydrates are in the food). For example, white bread turns into blood sugar faster than table sugar does. The key is that the more processed the food is, the faster it turns into blood sugar.
With the introduction of the food pyramid, diabetes started to rise in the United States (and other parts of the world that used teh pyramid). It used to be that diabetes, in general, was broken into two groups: childhood and adult-onset. These two types are now called Type I and Type II diabetes respectively. 20 years ago, it was rare to see a child with Type II diabetes. Now it is quite common. In fact, children born after 2000 have a 33 1/3 % chance of developing diabetes i their lifetime. Minority children ahve a 50% chance of developing diabetes. This is sad and never should happen. With balanced nutrition and proper exercise, this trend can be reversed. That is what we teach in our program. We do not want to see anyone suffering from Type II diabetes.