Is Diet the Cornerstone in Management of Diabetes?

Abstract

Dietary management of diabetes mellitus is stressed in current textbooks and articles on treatment of the disease. Diet in diabetes has had a distinguished, controversial, 3500-year history,¹ and through the years, tradition, as opposed to scientific evidence, has had a remarkable influence on the prescription of dietary therapy for diabetes.In 1973 Kelly West² first called attention to the fact that patients with diabetes rarely understand and follow their prescribed diets. He suggested that much of our effort at dietary counseling for these patients was "ineffective and wasteful," and he urged the development of more effective approaches.In 1983 Frank . . .