I recently read a report in Science News about childhood obesity and its link to diabetes in kids in America. Get this: The number of overweight children in the U.S. between ages 6 and 11 has risen from seven percent to 19 percent in the past 20 years. And they’re also developing diabetes at an alarming rate as well. You know diabetes, the one where your body stops producing insulin or can’t use it correctly any longer, leading to a build-up of sugars which makes you blind or your kidneys fail and your foot gets amputated. Yeah, that one.

I think I may know the culprit. Chuck and I recorded a podcast on high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) that hasn’t been published yet. One of the big flashing neon signs I found in researching the subject was that after food scientists figured out a quick, cheap and dirty way to make HFCS out of plain old CS in the 1970s, we saw a rise in obesity and diabetes here in the U.S. The pair are suspiciously correlated; HFCS is as yet unproven to have directly caused the increase in the two. My spidey sense is tingling, which really means something since I likely narrowly escaped developing diabetes years back. You see, I was a fat kid and I once bashed Spider-Man’s head in with a hammer.

I had this Spider-Man piggy bank and I realized one day that there was probably a load of money in there, so I accessed it. Violently. I bought two school lunches every day with the proceeds for awhile. I introduced myself to peanut butter Twix and Slim Jims at the Open Pantry convenience store. I realized that the strawberries I’d been eating all my life sucked in comparison.

I’m still dealing with this early seachange in my attitudes toward healthy food. Vegetables still suck, but at least they don’t give you diabetes. I realize this now. Must mean I’ve become a grownup.

More on HowStuffWorks.com:
How bad for you is high-fructose corn syrup?
How Diabetes Works
How does childhood obesity work?