Savvy Insights from Boston Globe Columnist Derrick Z. Jackson

Call me mushy, but I get so incredibly excited — with this heartwarming feeling in my being — whenever I find an astute, thoughtful journalist, who is waking up his or her readers to the dangers of diabetes, processed foods, etc.

I’ve found such a person in the amazingly prolific Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson.

Earlier this year, I singled out Jackson before on my SUGAR SHOCK! Blog, when he wrote a provocative op ed piece, "Diabetes and the trash food industry,"

I’m telling you, it’s still thrilling to have a fellow journalist stand up to major food companies making processed culprit carbs. (At the time, he wrote, "We have created this monster by allowing trash food marketers to prey on our children and by letting our children disappear into video screens."

Now, I urge you to read and think about Jackson’s latest piece, "Diabetes: the silent killer among us."

He perceptively writes:

"The obvious question is whether diabetes and obesity have to be the price of `progress’ and “modernization.’ Everyone knows the answer is no. Yet there are no concerted efforts to halt the progress of this modern disease."

Although in his piece, he singles out salt (and sort of glosses over sugar), it’s an interesting column nonethess. What’s more, he rightly puts the spotlight on fast food as drivers to disease and diabetes. (I’ll have to see what I can do to get him to write more about sugar!)