Impact of Dietary Module on Nutritional Knowledge and Consumption Pattern of Type 2 Diabetic Patients at Risk of Cardiac Diseases

Abstract

As diabetes is a disease which continues for a lifetime, the proper therapy methods should be applied in order to control the disease, remove or relief the symptoms, prevent and delay the complications. Patients have a major role in the control and treatment of T2DM. So knowledge of different aspects of this disease especially diet therapy is very important for these patients. The aim of the study was to determine the effect of nutrition education on diabetic patient's nutritional knowledge and food consumption habits. To provide nutrition education, an evaluated dietary module with the help of 16 panel members was developed. Further in this study, diabetic subjects were divided into two groups, experimental (50 subjects) and control (50 subjects). Nutrition education with the help of module was provided to the experimental group and not to the control group. In order to determine the nutritional knowledge, 30 questions related to general facts and management information about disease were presented to the patients. "24 hour recall method" for three consecutive days was used to determine the food intake. Further daily intake of energy and other nutrients were determined using computer software. At the end of nutrition education, significant differences were detected in experimental group regarding nutritional knowledge, dietary and nutrient intake and a higher percentage change was also observed in experimental group as compared to control group. The efficacy of the dietary module in improving nutritional knowledge, dietary intake was confirmed in the present study because obtained results indicated that education was effective in changing their consumption habits.