Native Americans have the highest rate of type 2 diabetes in the US. The CDC projects that 1 in 2 Native children born after the year 2000 will develop type 2 diabetes in their lifetime. On a per person basis, the federal government spends significantly more diabetes public health money on Native Americans than any other racial or ethnic group in the US. If the government spends the most money per person on diabetes education and prevention, then why do Native Americans have the highest rate? People try to say its genetic. Its in their DNA. It's not. It's nutrition-related. Diabetes is a chronic illness that was basically nonexistent in this population prior to 1940. I've lived around Native Americans almost my whole life. I was married to one. My kids are members of a tribe. I lived on a reservation for 5 years and worked for another tribe for 15 years. Why is diabetes so prevalent in this population? Because the food source has changed. My kids are Paiute. Their grandma's family comes from the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. Their grandpa's family comes from the high deserts of Northern Nevada. They were hunter-gatherers. They hunted big game like deer, antelope, elk, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, bear. They ate smaller game like rabbit, snake, and fish. Non-native vegetables don't grow very well in the high mountains and high desert due to soil & climate. So the plants they mainly ate were seasonal and grew wild in the area. Pine nuts, choke cherries & elderberries, wild onion, tea, and rice grass. Up until about 100 years ago, the people of my kids' tribe were slim, active, healthy, and lived longer lives. In the late 1800s, their gr-gr-grandpa took a job as a Yosemite Park tour guide. He and his family lived in the valleys of the Eastern Sierra Nevadas. Their main food source was hunting and gathering. His family were some of the finest Indian basket weavers in the world, and their baskets are on display in the Yosemite Park Museum. Later, he left his tour guide job and moved his family to settle in the mountain valley where he was born. He bought some land and began cattle ranching. So why do American Indians develop diabetes so easily now? Because, almost like overnight, they went from being hunter-gatherers and eating their ancestral foods to eating government commodities. Much of the food given to them today is the same government commodities that has been given to them for almost 100 years. I lived on the rez. I used to get commodities. Big bags of flour, rice, beans, corn meal, powdered eggs, corn syrup, and sugar. Large containers of vegetable oil. Canned foods containing vegetables high in added sodium and fruits in heavy syrup. None of this food was part of their ancestral diet. They went from eating wild game, berries, onion, and rice grass to eating bread fried in vegetable oil, flour, corn, and sugar. They went from being healthy and active to developing nutrition-related diabetes at a young age. Illness is what happens when people stop eating their ancestral diet and start eating food that isn't meant for them. The government allocates millions of dollars specifically for diabetes education for Native American communities yet they keep giving them the same foods. Some of the healthiest Natives I know are ones who own a small ranch or farm, raise their own animals, and hunt on their own land. Some of the unhealthiest ones I know eat a diet full of government commodities. It's food to keep them fed, but not to keep them healthy.