While these numbers are shocking (and frankly, quite terrifying), there is some optimism: type 2 diabetes is preventable.

Nevertheless, we are dealing with a metabolic crisis in the United States and around the world. Thus, recognizing “obesity as the way our environment is arranged and the way we unfairly organize our resources and societies,” as researchers from Lancet review is, so eloquently, not an option if we are to optimize the metabolic well-being of humanity moving forward.