Nutritional advice for people with diabetes: Past, present, what next?

Abstract

The dietary management of diabetes has undergone enormous change in the last 20 years following the realisation that inflexible regimens dominated by carbohydrate and sucrose restriction were inappropriate. Modern dietary guidelines aim to optimise not just the management of glycaemia but other parameters which influence microvascular and cardiovascular risk such as dyslipidaemia, adiposity and hypertension. Patients are no longer expected to follow standardised diets, but are encouraged to make adjustments to existing eating habits in a way which achieves permanent and beneficial change. Future management is likely to be dominated by the rising prevalence of type 2 diabetes in both adults and children and the need to find effective ways of preventing and correcting obesity. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.