the-absolute-funniest-posts:

My initial reaction upon stumbling across this in my random scrollings through random tumblrs (tumblr, for me, sometimes leads to the same thing that happens when I go to TV Tropes – I end up somewhere having no idea what lead me there) was a kneejerk desire to punch my computer screen, which gradually down-graded to face-palming and then to “::sigh:: Seriously?” levels of annoyance.

Does American fast ood come up with some whacked-out, seriously-not-a-great-idea-from-a-health-standpoint stuff? Yes. Is diabetes a growing problem in the US? Yes. Is obesity a growing problem in the US? Yes. Are these last two sometimes related, in the case of Type 2 (usually non-insulin dependent) diabetes? Yes.

Am I still pissed off that this joke apparently happened? Yes.

Besides the fact that it’s pretty clearly fat-shaming, it’s painting a complex chronic disease as having a single cause: weight issues. It’s focusing solely on Type 2 diabetes, which is admittedly on the rise and getting more attention these days than is Type 1 (insulin dependent) diabetes, which is also on the rise and is being found in more and more very young children – I’m talking 18 months and younger, who’ve never eaten fried chicken in their lives.

I have Type 1 diabetes. I was diagnosed when I was eleven, and by this coming February, I’ll have been living with it for fourteen years. For me, developing this disease was likely a combination of genetics and contracting one of several viruses which have been know to trigger auto-immune diseases like Type 1 diabetes. My grandmother had 10 older siblings: every one of them had Type 2. My mother’s oldest sister has Type 1 (she was originally misdiagnosed as Type 2 back in the 1970s when people still thought only kids could get Type 1, which was still mainly called “juvenile diabetes”; however, you can develop it anywhere from birth to well into your thirties and almost forties). That aunt’s son (child #2 out of 4) developed it, and one of his two daughters developed it. My mom’s other sister’s grandson developed it when he was five.

Sometimes, diabetes has nothing to do with weight. I resent jokes like this for running with the idea that having diabetes means it’s your fault because you’re an “overweight idiot” who makes poor dietary choices. That mentality is not funny, and it’s not helpful, because it is essentially going, “Lol lol, look at the fatties and what they did to themselves” and that pisses me off.