The way I explain it is (and I would not be 'explaining' to someone, anyone, who said T2 was 'self inflicted' - I would be asking them to step outside! But that might be because I have high blood glucose right now and I am starving myself for another two and a half hours! This is when no-one should mess with me
):
Without the genetic predisposition there is no T2 diabetes, regardless of the environmental factors (ie the coke, sugars, carbs, environmental toxins, food toxins etc - and since when are those things self inflicted?) (The coke yes, but not the levels of sugar in it!)
T2D comes from a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental factors. There is not one without the other.
Not all fat people get diabetes. Not all diabetics are fat.
Our food environment has changed phenomenally in the past 2-4 decades in particular. It contains much greater levels of sugar, which acts like a toxin to everyone, but particularly folk with the genetic predisposition for fat deposits around the organs around the belly that affect blood glucose dysfunction, and the other complex functions involved in T2D, ie when it all goes wrong. Our food also contains much more potentially toxic additives, and can be genetically altered in ways that function particularly badly to people with the genetic predisposition - ie is insulin-provoking food. This particularly refers to wheat, and wheat products, is one theory. Also dairy is another. (I just say it's a theory, but one that the individual can check for themselves by eating and metering.)
NONE of us inflicted these things on ourselves. NO ONE woke up one morning and said, hey! which chronic disease will I choose to have today? It is insulting and obfuscating of the realities of living in the modern world to suggest people with chronic health conditions brought it upon themselves.
We certainly were not responsible for agriculture, and for the food corporations who will be laughing to themselves that T2diabetics even consider that they have done this to themselves.Laughing all the way to the bank, as my mother loves to say.
Yes, we need to talk about this much much more. We need to get our governments and our fellow tax payers on board with helping change governmental food recommendations/the official food pyramid in our countries that are still promoting a quarter of a plate of carbs each meal to diabetics, and to keep away from what is now called healthy saturated fats, and we need to keep the food industry in line and prevent them from killing us in the process of their business.
Self inflicted? What a good crock of **** and economically effective if you can convince T2 diabetics it is all their fault!!
It makes as much sense to say people with cancer brought it upon themselves, due to choosing their environments. (And their genes? hmmm.) Including the food and drink one. Crossfit could try that one on.
I have diabetes. I am the first one in my family to get it, on both sides. But my family has been riddled with deaths from cancer post reproductive ages. Now diabetes is cropping up, sometimes along with cancer. In our generation (ie born in the 60s.) (one prediabetic cousin, and one who had gestational diabetes.) Something has clearly changed, but it isn't our physical vulnerability - it is what we are vulnerable to which has taken a shift. Ie , our livers and pancreases are more vulnerable to our food and drink, and to other environmental toxins.
These are my thoughts on the matter, in any case.