Origin and nature of diabetes
Illness was generally attributed to events or agents outside the body rather than to primary failure of an organ within it. This model may reflect the predominance of acute infectious illness in the recent cultural history of this group. All informants believed that the primary cause of diabetes, and that of poor diabetic control, was too much sugar and, to a lesser extent,
other features of a Western diet, both of which feature strongly in folk models of other cultural groups