Support Diabetes Research, Buy Soda?
Filed under: General Health, Nutrition
Recently a friend of mine sent me a story about how KFC has been donating some of its sales to support juvenile diabetes research. I think this is a wonderful idea as it is imperative we become better at preventing and treating diabetes in children and adults.
However, KFC is making this donation in a rather hypocritical manner. KFC will donate a dollar to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation every time you buy a mega jug of soda. A mega jug! That is a half-gallon of soda!
Crazily enough the JDRF defends this idea “JDRF supports research for type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease that results when the immune system attacks the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, therefore requiring a child or adult with the disease to depend on insulin treatment for the rest of their lives. It is a common misconception that type 1 diabetes is caused by obesity or eating too much junk food or sweets.”
To me this is merely semantics. While it is true that sugar and diet do not contribute to the development of type 1 diabetes, it is quite clear that they DO contribute to the development of type 2 diabetes! You would think that with type 2 diabetes on the rise in children, that the JDRF would not be promoting the sale of a half-gallon of fountain soda, which provides roughly 250 grams of sugar!
Beyond that even, while it is again true that sugar intake does not cause type 1 diabetes, type 1 diabetics do have to be very aware of the amount of sugar/carbohydrates they eat to regulate their blood sugar and concomitant insulin usage. So are we really promoting a beverage with 250 grams of sugar to support type 1 diabetics?
Maybe we can drum up enough money to find better treatment for type 1 diabetics by increasing the number of type 2’s!
Does this strike anyone else as completely insane?
Check out the BSP Training & Nutrition Newsletter!
You will get immediate access to:
- Weekly updates and exclusive content.
- The 20-page report "The Truth About Saturated Fat & Cholesterol."
- Become more awesome!
Posted on July 13th, 2011 by Brian St. Pierre
2 Comments
July 15th, 2011 at 9:41 pm
Yes completely. Not to be negative, but something along these lines always seemed slightly strange to me. Events, such as, A Walk to Cure Cancer, promote (or at least display/serve) unhealthy foods and potential foods that if eaten as a regular diet could possibly increase an individuals odds of getting cancer. Now don’t get me wrong I have supported this event numerous times and think it is great to raise money to support cancer research, as I myself have seen the devastating effects of cancer. But at these events they have table after table giving out brownies, soda, candy, cookies, pizza, ect. Why not sell healthy foods for donations and raise peoples awareness at the same time about all types of chemicals (food and other) that may be potentially cancer causing. Maybe I’m completely off cause there is not as direct of a correlation to type 2 diabetes, but I find the situations kind of similar.
September 29th, 2012 at 1:03 pm
* Chin strap-It’s a sort of a band that covers jaw in order that the mouth remains closed even though sleeping and to ensure that the individual won’t snore.