diabetes

The drive for healthy diets has targeted over-consumption and excess fat in food. "Now, there's a fuill-on war on sugar," says Vox, laying out why the subject is more complicated than it first appears and offering "11 facts to clear up the confusion."

The Laura and John Arnold Foundation donated $500,000 to the city of Philadelphia to fight the beverage industry, which sued after voters passed a soda tax last November, says Philadelphia Business Journal.

Energized by victories in four cities and Illinois' largest county, Massachusetts state Rep. Kay Khan says she will introduce a soda-tax bill when the legislature meets in January, says public broadcaster WBUR-FM. Khan championed the tax in the past but believes this time is different: "I think it does make a difference to see that others are thinking about this, and you're not standing out there alone."

The newest locality to approve a tax on sugary beverages is also the largest — Cook County, home to 5.2 million people including the city of Chicago. The Cook County Board approved the 1-cent-per-ounce tax on a 9-8 vote with board president Toni Preckwinkle breaking a tie, said the Chicago Tribune.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the beverage industry is spending millions to convince voters that the proposed soda tax will raise their grocery prices, not just the cost of sugary drinks, says Bridget Huber in FERN’s latest story, produced with PRI’s The World.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told a soda industry group, in the form of a cease-and-desist letter, to stop using him in its campaign against soda taxes in California's Bay Area, says Politico. Sanders says he has not taken a position on referendums in San Francisco and Oakland and it is "false" and "misleading" for the American Beverage Association to feature him in advertising.

Despite a steady bombardment of advice about the importance of eating a healthy diet, Americans are eating fewer fruits and vegetables on average than they were in the 1990s, said the USDA’s Economic Research Service, which analyzed annual consumption rates for 120 varieties of raw, dried, canned, frozen and juiced produce between 1994-98 and 2007-2008.

As obesity becomes increasingly common in the U.S., food banks are trying to help their visitors manage diabetes as well as hunger, says The New York Times. Historically, food banks tried to satiate hunger with whatever food they could, even if it meant doling out chips and cans of sugary barbecue beans. But many of the people looking for food aid now suffer from poor nutrition and dangerous blood sugar levels, rather than too few calories.

High sugar and trans-fats in Indian food are turning the world’s second most populous country diabetic, while child malnutrition in the region is slowly retreating, the 2016 Global Nutrition Report said. The study found that diabetes, a deficiency that inhibits the body to effectively use insulin, affects 9.5 percent of India’s population, putting it ahead of the U.K. and the U.S., and on par with China. Furthermore, 2 percent of deaths in all age groups in India are a result of diabetes, the WHO said.

Eating full-fat milk, yogurt and cheese may help protect against Type 2 diabetes, says a study of 3,333 adults published in the journal Circulation.

Assemblyman Richard Bloom pulled California’s latest soda tax bill before it could come up for a committee vote on Tuesday, reports The Sacramento Bee.

More than half of California is diabetic or pre-diabetic, says a new study out by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the California Center for Public Health Advocacy. Without treatment, more than 70 percent of pre-diabetics will eventually get the disease.

Baltimore city officials are considering whether businesses selling soda and other sugary drinks should be required to post warning signs about the drinks, reports the Associated Press.

The splashy false-advertising lawsuit filed against corn refiners by the sugar industry was settled out of court under confidential terms. The settlement was announced with the trial under way in federal court in Los Angeles.

Researchers at a Boston Hospital discovered a hormone that could be the basis for a "fructose tolerance test," says Harvard University, which could identify people at risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

A "soda tax" of 1 cent per teaspoon of sweetener would be levied under a bill unveiled by Rep Rosa DeLauro, Connecticut Democrat, with the revenue used in programs to reduce obesity, diabetes and other health losses due to sugar-sweetened beverages. "There is a clear relationship between sugar-sweetened beverages and a host of other health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, obesity and tooth decay," said DeLauro in a statement.