According to a new U.S. study released this last week, the development of type 2 diabetes in adults can be predicted in childhood.

Somehow, that's comforting, since recognizing problems in childhood would appear to make it much easier to design and integrate treatments into the lifestyles of those who need it.

In the study, it was found that a parental history of diabetes, as well as the presence of metabolic syndrome in childhood were major predictors of type 2 diabetes in adulthood.

Those are two areas that are easily checked in kids (and their parental histories), although the presence of metabolic syndrome in any child is disconcerting. Metabolic syndrome sounds like a collapsing of good health: high blood pressure; high triglycerides; high body mass; high blood glucose; and low levels of "good" high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. You must have three of the five to qualify.