“There have never been any good studies showing that the kind of foods people eat leads to diabetes in the long run,” said Richard Kahn, a diabetes researcher at the University of North Carolina and former executive director of the American Diabetes Association. “But we do know from studies that overweight individuals who lose at least 4 percent of their body weight can delay the onset of the disease.”
Judging from photos, Deen is overweight, perhaps even obese. She said she’s had diabetes for three years but feels no qualms about continuing to push greasy comfort foods; as she told NBC’s “Today” show, “I’ve always said, ‘Practice moderation, y’all.’ I’ll probably say that a little louder now.”
Kahn caused his own stir last week at a diabetes conference when he presented a paper published in the journal Health Affairs stating that efforts to establish community-based intervention programs “will not be very effective in preventing diabetes, largely because most overweight or obese people cannot maintain weight loss over time.” He said money would be better spent on diagnosing diabetes early and managing it with medications.
Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston -- which has an ongoing 18-year study evaluating whether diabetes can be prevented through exercise and weight loss counseling -- issued a press release sharply attacking Kahn and saying Joslin physicians strongly disagreed with his comments.
The release included this heated quote from Dr. Osama Hamdy, medical director of Joslin’s obesity clinical program: “Saying that physicians should stand by and allow patients to proceed to a diagnosis of diabetes is a disservice to patients and constitutes a surrender in the face of one of the greatest threats to public health the world faces today.”
