I
have a slight case of diabetes, which has proven manageable by changes diet and
lifestyle, without medication. But the diagnosis I originally received got me
thinking about how a diabetic might look at the world.
One
of the easiest things that can happen when one is diagnosed with the onset of
diabetes is to become immensely selfish. It would be easy for a diabetic to
ignore the problems of the rest of the world and say that his or her focus
should be, aside from work and family, on maintaining his or her health. Where
could such a person find the time to also worry about such things as global
warming and world hunger?
This
argument would be true if living happily with diabetes were a problem separate
from others, and if it had a purely technical solution. But the diabetic has to
choose how to live. And, as it turns out, living responsibly in the world is
also the path to health despite diabetes.
As
it turns out, the kinds of food that diabetics have to reject are the same
kinds of food that are killing the global ecosystem. To live as a deliberately
happy diabetic is to live in an ecologically responsible fashion. Among the
things that I have to reject, to keep diabetes from developing, are refined
sugar and fat meat. But these are also foods I must reject if I am to be a
responsible world citizen. Some of the best tropical farmland in the
Philippines is used to raise sugar, as an export crop, rather than to raise
food for Filipinos. We Americans can pay more for sugar than poor Filipinos can
pay for rice and beans. My use of sugar was contributing to keeping Filipinos
poor. And fat beef? A vast amount of farm acreage in the United States is used
to raise corn and soybeans not for human consumption but to feed to livestock,
especially cows. Industrial farming, processing the corn and beans, feeding it
to livestock, and processing the livestock uses a huge amount of energy, most
of it from fossil fuels, and generates a lot of waste, including bovine-burp
methane which is a potent greenhouse gas. I now eat less beef, thus reducing
the market for some of the most environmentally destructive commercial
practices. The change in diet I have to make is the change I should have made
anyway. I had already, for ecological reasons, begun eating less sugar and
beef; I just needed to go further in that direction. The right thing for me was also the right thing for the world. It
didn’t have to be that way, but it is.
“The
environment” is a misleading term. It is not just about rare birds and distant
rainforests. The environment is everything that surrounds us, and includes us.
The environment is the medium through
which we relate to other people. Part of what we do to love other people is
to help to keep the environment safe for them to live in.
Frequently,
the best foods for diabetics are those that are not locally grown and are not
available at all times of the year. That is, for most American diabetics, much
good food must be transported thousands of miles and/or processed.
Transportation and processing use a lot of energy and have a major impact on
the environment. I thought about this when I bought fresh broccoli and lettuce
in the winter. What do you think? Should I have done this? I also bought fresh
carrots and cabbage. Carrots and cabbage can at least be stored for longer
periods than broccoli and lettuce; they can be raised and stored locally, to a
certain extent. Sugar comes from tropical farmlands; but stevia is an imported
tropical product also. Unsweetened yogurt and dried fruits also have less
environmental impact than fresh green vegetables in the winter. I say this in
order to simply admit that a happy diabetic, eating from the vast table of
foods that are healthy, will often encounter foods that are not
“environmentally friendly,” even if they are pesticide-free. (Mushrooms? They
can be local and year-round. All you need is a dark room and (let’s call it) mulch.
And every place has mulch.)
Nevertheless,
for the most part, a happy diabetic eats foods that are better for the
environment and for the people of the world than he or she might otherwise have
eaten. There is no need for a diabetic to cast aside a dedication to
environmental and social responsibility in order to be a happy eater.
How
does this relate to evolution? In the Stone Age, humans didn’t have to worry
about the environment. Nowadays, there are so many of us and our technology is
so toxic that every little thing we do is wrong. Don’t throw anything on the
ground, etc. But we no longer live in the environment in which we evolved. We
live in an environment thick with other human beings whose interests we must
altruistically respect.
