When I was growing up, my favorite uncle had type II diabetes. I did not know exactly what this was but I knew he could not eat certain things (even pasta- something I have since learned thatwas not absolutely necessary）并且他正在使用（我眼中的恐怖）设备来监测家里的血糖。

在我的年轻大脑中，老年人发生了2型糖尿病，阻止您吃巧克力之类的好东西，并有一个奇怪的名字（希腊语中的糖尿病也意味着一个用于几何形状的指南针工具).

However, I have learned a few things since: a) Type 2 diabetes is increasingly affecting children and younger adults (following a rise in youth obesity – 1 in 3 children is overweight or obese, see for examplesome recent data on Portuguese青年）b）可以做一些事情来防止这种情况发生，c）糖尿病与几何学无关。

Given the ongoing increase in diabetes prevalence (1 in 11 adults患有糖尿病），事实是，大约90％的糖尿病患者患有2型糖尿病，重点是预防2型糖尿病，似乎是前进的道路，以使这一数字降低。最近宣布的“sugar tax”that caused a lot of media attention represents such an effort.

I asked people on Social Media what they thought could be done. The few replies that I got seem to revolve around a main point: educate children and if possible do that at school!

Indeed, schools seem to be ideal places for diabetes prevention programmes. They could theoretically tackle two of the main diabetes risk factors: obesity and lack of physical activity via nutritional education, provision of healthy eating options and exercise programs.

在有关如何处理肥胖的报告中prevention back in 2012, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has described schools as focal points in dealing with obesity and aCochrane评论from around the same time showed beneficial effects of child obesity prevention programmes.

This review suggests that a school curriculum that includes healthy eating, physical activity seem to be a promising strategy (amongst others). These and other initiatives are very nicely summed upin this Editorialfrom Lancet. If you are interested in such studies, keep an eye open for the next Cochrane Review on implementation of obesity prevention programs,as a protocol has been recently提交。

This made me wonder whether there are countries where healthy eating curricula or policies are implemented in schools. I certainly do hope that things have at least changed a bit since the time I was a student: I cannot even think of one healthy food option offered in the school shop; there was zero nutritional education; and you could easily skip physical education classes.

In the UK for instance,there is some change observed in the food served in some British schools, partly thanks to TV Chef Jamie Oliver’s documentary series 10 years ago. I also wonder if/how such policies can be implemented taking into account more complicated factors such as教育不平等that seem to affect diabetes-related mortality andlow income contextswhere there seems to be a rise in diabetes prevalence.

I would be interested to see what is being done in schools in other countries. Please share your experience! How can diabetes prevention interventions be implemented in schools? Are you aware of any creative interventions in your country? Or maybe you have some fun ideas yourself?

I think I will call my uncle today. As he was never overweight in his life maybe he has some other ideas of how his diabetes could (or perhaps could not) have been prevented. And as he is a language lover maybe he can explain to me why in Greek we use the same word for this disease and the compass tool.