My research explores Maya perspectives on neo-traditional farming as a source of metabolic health and resilience to the global epidemic of type-two diabetes. This article is based on long-term ethnographic research and interviews in Maya Mountains Reservation (MMR) communities in southern Belize, an area with low diabetes prevalence relative to national and global populations. Research participants see lower rates of diabetes in the MMR as the result of neo-traditional peasant and subsistence farming on ancestral lands. Good metabolic health represents the embodiment of food systems that routinize healthy material and social relationships to the landscape. This research suggests that diabetes is endemic to modern food systems and proposes neo-traditional food ways as a societal antidote to nutritional disease. My research demonstrates and responds to a need for further disaggregated data on diabetes prevalence in Indigenous communities, contributes to the social scientific literature on the importance of small-scale agricultural models for community health, and provides a case study of success in diabetes prevention. I engage Maya perspectives with anthropological literature on embodiment and small-scale agriculture to suggest neo-traditional food ways as healthier alternatives to capitalist agricultural development.

我的研究探讨了玛雅人对新传统农业的看法，将其作为代谢健康和抵御全球二型糖尿病流行病的一种来源。本文基于对伯利兹南部玛雅山脉保留地 (MMR) 社区的长期民族志研究和访谈，该地区相对于全国和全球人口而言糖尿病患病率较低。研究参与者认为，由于新传统农民和祖传土地上的自给农业，MMR 的糖尿病发病率较低。良好的代谢健康代表了食物系统的体现，将健康的物质和社会关系与景观联系起来。这项研究表明，糖尿病是现代食品系统的地方病，并提出了新传统的饮食方式作为营养疾病的社会解毒剂。我的研究表明并响应了对土著社区糖尿病患病率进一步分类数据的需求，为关于小规模农业模式对社区健康的重要性的社会科学文献做出贡献，并提供了成功预防糖尿病的案例研究。我将玛雅人的观点与关于具身化和小规模农业的人类学文献结合起来，以建议将新传统食物方式作为资本主义农业发展的更健康替代品。