What about the supermarkets which are responsible for this rapid expansion, not only in diabetes, but in numerous public health problems. Supermakets have changed in their few short years, on how the public eats, cooks, and shops. This in turn has clearly had an adverse effect on small food retailers, on farmers, and other producers of food, all done for pecuniary motives without consideration to the public's health.

When next in a supermarket take note of how many shelves are volumn stocked with either denatured processed foods or carbohydrate-dense foods or vegetable oils that were previously used to make paint products. Even our morning cereal is suspect in raising insulin to damaging levels and hence the alarming rate in diabetes.

There appears to a correlation between the expansion of the supermarkets and the alarming increase to public ill-health, but, then, no one wishes to hear bad news. The general attitude seems to be, why kill the goose that lays the golden egg, but, that's a seriouly flawed premise.

Sally Fallon's book, 'Nourishing Traditions' reminds us of how things were. It is wrongly listed as a cookery book; rather, it's a treatise on nutrition and a very worthy read. Dr Ron Rosendale's article, 'Insulin and its Metabolic Effects' which can be read at www.mercola.com/fegi/pf/2001/jul/14/insulin.htm is also a worthy read.

Both those authors unwittingly lend support to the Aitken's diet and indirectly to the adverse effect of supermarkets, but, owing to the convenience factor, the supermarkets are destined, regretfully, to be here to stay.

The pharmaceutical giants (our new world leaders) welcome this feature which will keep them in business making pills for the medical profession and those pills, undoubtefdly, will have side- effects that require further pills to offset the side-effects!

My apologies for this apparently jaundiced view which is so manifestly obvious!