Vital Signs: Poem Explores the History of Food Inequality

Type-2 diabetes has an especially devastating impact in communities of color. African-Americans are twice as likely as whites to get the disease, and to have a limb amputated as a result. That's exactly what happened to Erica Sheppard McMath's uncle. He lost his foot before dying from diabetes-related complications. McMath says she struggled to understand why so many family members suffered from diabetes, so she turned to history for answers. What she found became a slam poem called "Death Recipe," which she performed on HBO.