Editorial: Preying on health crisis in making

Andrew Bonallack.

We are getting plenty of obesity and diabetes messages almost daily.

In fact, we are being hammered with the realities of New Zealand's sugar-rich diet. But it is interesting to notice that one industry is really paying attention to the diabetes crisis we're in at the moment.

It's understandable, but it's not a good thing. Commercial interests will swiftly step up if the perceived market is there.

This has been hit home to me, in a devastating punch, in hearing for the first time a radio advertisement for insulin.

Briefly, if our bodies aren't producing insulin, we develop diabetes, and insulin is required regularly, usually injected, for a diabetic's survival. Obesity creates insulin resistance, which can lead to chronic metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes.

Since we've already been hit with the message that one in three New Zealanders are overweight, are we in danger of treating this as a societal norm?

In the fictional movie Wall-E, a spaceship of passengers, over time and several generations, devolved to fat because it simply became normal to do so.

Every health message out there screams at us that it is a long way from normal to be obese, because we become prediabetic, or develop diabetes, or just generally die before our time. But now an advertiser has decided that it is the norm to require insulin and we've reached a decent enough commercial threshold of suffering people, ready to purchase our product.

Advertising works because enough people need something.

But it also works if enough people are scared of something.

Drug research is laudable, amazing research, where people are striving to cure cancer and win the Nobel Prize. But at the same time the drug industry is big, lucrative business simply because people can't be cured of everything that ails us.

When we are sick, we want the best medicine Western science can provide, to prolong our life and ease our suffering.

Well, here's a tip for prolonging your life. Put down the fork. Otherwise you're going to be financing the new medical cash-cow - the metabolic miracle that is insulin.

You've got it in you - literally. You shouldn't have to pay for it.