These ideas are false. They are food and diet industry propaganda that make and keep us fat and sick. Lies by the food industry combined with bad government policy based on food industry lobbying are the major cause of our obesity and diabetes epidemic.

The cure for what ails us -- both in our bodies and in our nation -- can be found in the kitchen. It is a place to rebuild community and connection, strengthen bonds with family and friends, teach life-giving skills to our children, and enrich and nourish our bodies and our souls.

Diabetes is hurting people both at the personal and the national levels. The best way to fight Type 2 diabetes is to avoid it in the first place. Developing healthy nutrition and physical activity habits are critical factors in avoiding diabetes.

The common wisdom is that if you are overweight you are unhealthy, and if you are thin, you are healthy. But new research points to just how dangerous being skinny can be -- if you are a "skinny fat" person, that is.

We need to stand up in our homes, communities and schools and create healthy environments for kids. We need to take back our kids' taste buds, our kitchens and our homes, which have been hijacked by the food industry, and ban anything except real food.

After Haiti I realized that the answer had to be somewhere else. If social networks can promote unhealthy lifestyles, maybe we can use social networks to create health.

See your blood sugar numbers as information not a judgment of your self-worth. Monitoring your blood sugar is the best tool to help you evaluate the effectiveness of your diabetes treatment plan.

I realized we had to decentralize health care and put patients and communities at the center of the solution empowering them to create health, not simply treat disease. I realized that if you were sick, the best place to create health might not be the doctor or clinic but your own community.

As a certified diabetes educator for the last 18 years, what frustrates me the most is that in the majority of cases of pre-diabetes, particularly those with an early diagnosis, developing on to Type 2 diabetes is preventable

What if Type 2 diabetes could be completely reversed? What if it weren't an inexorable, progressive disease that has to be better "managed" by our health care system with better drugs, surgery and coordination of care?

Patients who lowered their cholesterol with statins had higher levels of insulin. Why is that important? Because elevated insulin levels are the first step on the road to diabetes.