Although an estimated 80 percent of cases of type 2 diabetes could be prevented by a change of diet and exercise, it looks like the smart money is instead on the creation of a vast new diabetes industry. The mainstream media is full of advertisements for new gadgets and drugs for diabetics, and the health care industry is gearing up to meet the surging demand for heart bypass operations (80 percent of diabetics will suffer from heart disease), dialysis, and kidney transplantation. At the supermarket checkout you can thumb copies of a new lifestyle magazine, Diabetic Living. Diabetes is well on its way to becoming normalized in the West--recognized as a whole new demographic and so a major marketing opportunity. Apparently it is easier, or at least a lot more profitable, to change a disease of civilization into a lifestyle than it is to change the way that civilization eats.

--Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food