Development and Analysis of an Argument That Seeks To Solve a Real-World Problem

Diabetes is exploding as a significant health crisis around the world, resulting in substantial human suffering and straining public health resources. I am afraid of contracting this incurable disease. According to the latest estimates from the World Health Organization, over 422 million people globally have diabetes, quadrupling since 1980 when only 108 million cases were documented. This chronic disease causes elevated blood sugar and insulin levels, which can trigger life-threatening complications if not adequately controlled. The rapid acceleration of diabetes correlates strongly with lifestyle changes in developing nations, including sedentary living, processed and high-sugar food consumption, and obesity trends. If left unchecked, experts predict that 629 million individuals could have diabetes by 2045 (Klein et al., 2020). With the sustainability of healthcare systems at stake and lives hanging in the balance, addressing the root causes of diabetes through societal and policy initiatives represents an urgent priority for governments, nonprofits and health organizations worldwide.

Therefore, my conclusion is that promoting affordable nutrition education starting at a young age offers the most promising path to escaping the dangers posed by the global diabetes crisis. This can raise awareness of healthy lifestyles needed to curb this preventable affliction before it claims more lives and public health expenditures addressing this growing disease burden spiral higher still. My conclusion is based on the premise that proper nutrition helps prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes, which accounts for over 90% of diabetes cases globally. Studies demonstrate that adherence to traditional and balanced diets heavy in whole foods, vegetables, and lean proteins reduces the likelihood of elevated blood sugar and insulin resistance characteristic of diabetes later in life. Tragically, the consumption of processed sugars and carbohydrates has increased exponentially, even in developing countries, over the past three decades – perfectly correlating with the rampant rise of diabetes around the world. The second premise of my argument is that Most government healthcare policies focus on medication and treatment more than nutrition education and diabetes prevention awareness in society, which has led to diabetes being a health crisis. According to the World Health Organization’s latest Global Report on Diabetes, 70% of global healthcare spending related to diabetes goes towards tests and treatment. In comparison, less than 3% applies to diet and nutrition information accessibility. This reflects the reactive, not proactive, mindset of the healthcare industry worldwide.

The first premise related to nutrition helping prevent diabetes onset relies on an inductive generalization based on observing patterns linking healthy diets low in processed foods and sugars with lower rates of diabetes in large populations over time. Studies of specific groups transitioning to traditional diets indicate this correlation, but it requires inductive reasoning to apply those diet and diabetes observations universally. The second premise follows a more deductive logic, as we can definitively determine that most healthcare policies worldwide devote minimal resources to proactive nutritional education and diabetes prevention campaigns compared to disease treatment. Global health reports quantify this discrepancy in precise policy analysis figures (Mekala & Bertoni, 2020). The conclusion linking early nutritional education as the ideal diabetes solution demonstrates deductive logic, narrowly focusing the broader issue to a specific policy proposal as the foremost response based on those previous reasoned premises based on the inductive and deductive evaluation.

While the argument and conclusion presented make logical steps toward nutrition education as a public health strategy against diabetes, there are a few key assumptions. First, it presumes that affordable nutrition education could be implemented on a large scale to reach high-risk demographics, ignoring potential costs and logistical barriers. It also assumes that at-risk individuals would actively engage with and apply the nutrition information provided through such education programs. However, entrenched lifestyle habits and cultural dietary preferences could prove challenging to change solely through affordable education. Similarly, the conclusion rests on the assumption that this focus on early nutrition promotion would sufficiently curb future diabetes development globally. However, hereditary and genetic predispositions may still persistently elevate diabetes rates worldwide regardless of any feasible education-based prevention program.

References

Klein, S., Gastaldelli, A., Yki-Järvinen, H., & Scherer, P. E. (2022). Why does obesity cause diabetes? Cell metabolism, 34(1), 11-20. https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/pdf/S1550-4131(21)00631-8.pdf.

Mekala, K. C., & Bertoni, A. G. (2020). Epidemiology of diabetes mellitus. In Transplantation, bioengineering, and regeneration of the endocrine pancreas (pp. 49-58). Academic Press. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780128148334000046.