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In 1950, the rate of diabetes in the US was .78% of the population, today it's over 11%. Obesity is not the cause of diabetes in all cases. Mr. Peel, suffered a massive stroke 7 years ago due to undiagnosed diabetes. He was normal weight at the time. The insulin that he was on caused him to balloon in weight. He needed 5 injections a day. For years, I've been experimenting with his diet, until I finally hit upon a combination of foods - he now requires 0 injections a day, takes no diabetes medication and has (so far) lost 22 pounds.

In the 1950's, the rate of smoking was about 45%. Today it's about 21%. Nicotine is an appetite suppressant. There was a lot more nicotine in 1950's cigarettes (2.5mg) than those today (1.0mg). Eliminate a major appetite suppressant and you'll get increased food consumption. For the same level of caloric expenditure that will necessarily result in increased fat mass.

In the 1950's, people got a lot more physical activity than in the present day. Back then 30% of Americans worked in high activity jobs versus 22% by the year 2000. In addition, the percentage of low-activity jobs almost doubled from 23 to 41 percent. Driving cars to work went up from 67% in 1960 to 88% in 2000. As recently as 1969, about 40% of children walked or rode their bicycles to school compared to 13% in 2001. Leisure time activities have seen the same reversal. In the 1950s, there was little indoor play activity when it wasn't raining. In the present day, indoor play activity has almost entirely replaced outdoor play because video games, a million cable channels, NetFlix, and air conditioning make sedentary indoor activity more attractive. Eliminate a major source of caloric expenditure for a given energy intake and you will necessarily have an increase in body fat mass.

Adult onset diabetes is insulin resistant diabetes, not insulin deficient diabetes. The most common factor is being overweight and sedentary, that and having a high fat diet. Saturated fats can interfere with the action of the insulin receptor. A reduction in body fat caused by reducing energy intake, especially when accompanied by increase physical activity, can reduce or eliminate the need for insulin in Type II diabetes.

The change for me was to totally eradicate any man-made / genetically processed foods from his diet. So, even though I laud Campbell's and Kellogg's for going gluten free, for us, that's not our problem. The genetically modified soy that is added to cereals and breads is more deadly to Mr. Peel than wheat gluten.

You are barking up the wrong tree with respect to the contributing factors to adult onset diabetes.

You bring up some excellent points re: differences between 1950s and now - yet I can only speak from our own personal experience and not from a generality. In our world, Mr. Peel was NOT obese. He was NOT overweight. He was active - granted perhaps not as active as he could have been, but he did not have a beer gut, pot belly etc, and he was very strong. He has a private pilot's license and had regularly passed his FAA medical. Seven years ago, he woke up not being able to move the right side of his body. He was rushed to emergency, as he was diagnosed with a hemorrhagic stroke at the time. His blood pressure was 280/220. Despite the odds, he survived. It was also uncovered that he was diabetic. This was a shock to us. For the last 7 years, he's been on 5 injections of insulin a day, until, armed with enough data (I was head test engineer at NASA's JPL), I decided to put my theories on his condition - and test them against prevailing medical knowledge vs marketing "health food" claims vs urban legend. Navigating through our own path has been tricky. For us, I can safely say the garbage about 0 calories and 0 carbs is just that - garbage. Today I use only butter (margarine is forbidden), bake with only raw honey.

Diabetic bars made by Glucerna NEVER worked on him. Foods & drinks with 0 carbs kept his blood sugar at a sustained high. Until I realized that for decades, he had been eating sugar substitutes in his ice tea, in his sausage, in ... that once those things were removed from his diet, his blood sugars are stabilizing. Without insulin, he's daily average is about 126. 90 days ago, his daily average, (with 5 injections a day), close to 180.

Since 1950, we've had the following introductions into our food supply:

Year	Event
1975:	Introduction of High Fructose Corn Syrup
1983:	Aspartame in diet drinks
1993:	Aspartame in bakery goods
1998:	Synthetic folic acid and synthetic vitamins mandated by Congress to be added to cereals. Splenda approved. Canola Oil approved
2005:	80% of Soy bean crop is now genetically modified.

Diabetes is out of control in China - while in the US, its an interesting correlation that those ethnic groups that have the highest rate of diabetes also are subject to the highest amount of synthetic elements in their diet (genetic corn, genetic soy)

Group	Percentage Diabetes US 2012
Native Americans	16.1%
African Americans	12.6%
Hispanic Americans	11.8%
Asian Americans	8.4%
Caucasian Americans	7.1%

We've been adding more and more garbage into our food supply that is causing massive food allergies of which diabetes is one manifestation of a larger problem.