Type 2 diabetes appeared in the beginning of the 20th century, when sugar ceased to be a rare commodity to come and grace every kitchen table. Before that, the Old World relied on honey or beet sugar for sweetening. And, as the near lack of sweet recipes in the great culinary treaties of the Middles Ages shows, desserts as we…
Man originally was a hunter-gatherer and our organism is therefore designed to profit as much as possible from periods of abundance in anticipation of unavoidable food shortages. As long as the vast majority of mankind remained chronically underfed, this wasn’t a problem. Fat people were oddities – King Henry VIII of England, rotund Chinese mandarins and adipose oriental potentates spring…
Diabetes is always related to an anomaly involving the hormone insulin, which is produced by the pancreas. Insulin allows our cells to use the glucose supplied by the foods in our diet. If we do not secrete enough insulin, or if it does not work properly, as in diabetics, this glucose is not able to fuel the cells. It therefore…
