[Vigilanteman]

For part of my 14 years in Japan, I counted a fellow from the Marshall Islands Embassy in Tokyo among my friends. While he was grateful to America for freeing them from Japanese rule during the war, he pointed out one awful side effect.

Visiting American vessels provided canned goods so cheaply that the island nation found it economically advantageous to lease out their fishing rights and eat the cheap imported food.

That was his theory on why diabetes of the Marshall Islanders had skyrocketed.

[Blurb2350]

Yep. There was one island nation — I forget which — that had highest per capita wealth in the world for a short time after selling off the rights to its outlying islets’ massive guano accumulations. They stopped eating their traditional very healthy diet of fish and coconut and began gorging on imported canned foods. Spam is particularly popular among islanders.