Addressing Diabetes: Returning to a Traditional Diet is Idealistic, Not Realistic

After reading Anne Raver’s “In Desert, Finding Blooms that Heal” and Gary Paul Nabhan’s chapter, “Diabetes, Diet, and Native American Foraging Traditions,” no one can argue against the fact that diabetes is the foremost public health problem facing the Tohono O’odham people. Due to unhealthy dietary choices and lack of meaningful exercise regimes, diabetes diagnoses run rampant and take a toll on the community’s resources, medical costs, and cultural mentality. Yet, diabetes clearly does not only plague the Tohono O’odham. Many demographic populations and communities across the United States suffer from diabetes.

Diabetes is a nationwide problem that should be addressed. I am not inferring that we should discount the uptake in diabetes that affects the Tohono O’odham people because so many U.S. communities suffer from diabetes. I acknowledge that Westernization and other general U.S. influences introduced the Tohono O’odham people to fatty, unhealthy foods that contribute to diabetes, as well as the fact that traditional O’odham crops have been proven to not contribute to diabetes. However, I find arguing that the Tohono O’odham can only combat diabetes by returning to a traditional diet to be an incredibly unrealistic solution.

I might sound negative, but I consider myself to be a realist. Yes, it is a problem that the “younger generations are abandoning what it means to be culturally and ecologically O’odham” (Nabhan 201). Nevertheless, this is a cultural problem. How could the elders convince the greater Tohono O’odham people to return to agriculture and to a traditional diet? Purchasing food is obviously easier and thus more appealing. The Tohono O’odham should address their problem of declining cultural values—but they should address their diabetes problem with a realistic dietary solution that will appeal to the greater community.