Type 2 diabetes was quite uncommon until the twentieth century, for two reasons: first, it is typically diagnosed after age fifty (in fact, it used to be called adult-onset diabetes) and average life expectancy was lower than it is today, and second, food was not nearly as available and plentiful. The combination of relative food scarcity and low average life expectancy meant that type 2 diabetes was rare, and little effort was expended to search for effective treatments.
