Dietary behaviors and nutritional intake of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus in Japan
Authors: Nakao Motoyuki , Yamauchi Keiko , Ishihara Yoko 
Published: June 2021

Background

The prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) is increasing worldwide, which lead to being global concern about the social and economic burden of DM and its complications. Dietary instruction to the patients for the prevention of exacerbation emphasized the calorie restriction. Aside from calorie intake, various nutritional factors are also involved in the progression of DM and its complications. We, therefore, investigated that the dietary behavior and nutritional intake of the subjects including patients with DM to understand the relationship between dietary behavior and actual nutritional intake of DM patient.

Methods

Data were obtained from the subjects who visited the healthcare center for the medical checkup during 2012 – 2016 in Kyushu island, Japan (n = 6,261). The mean age of the subjects was 56.5 (range: 22 – 88) years old and the male‐to‐female ratio was 7: 3. Laboratory data and the self‐completed questionnaire including dietary, exercise, and other lifestyle‐related behaviors were collected. Dietary intakes of nutritional factors were estimated from the food frequency questionnaire.

Results

Among the study population, 8.3% of the subjects were diagnosed with DM. Of those, 56.9% of the patient with DM (4.7% of all subjects) were overlapped with physician‐diagnosed hypertension. Eating sweets or snack was significantly less frequent in the DM patients than in the non‐DM subjects in both genders. Sweet beverage consumption was less frequent in the male DM patients than that in the male non‐DM subjects. There were no significant differences among the female subjects in eating‐out behaviors such as dining out frequency, choice of menu, and consideration of calorie intake, while the male DM patients usually chose the healthier menu and considered calorie intake more than the male non‐DM subjects. Estimated energy intake was significantly lower only in the male DM patients than in the male non‐DM subjects. There was no significant difference in protein intake, and fat intake was lower in the patient group in both genders. In the male subjects, carbohydrate intake was significantly lower in the DM patients than that in the non‐DM subjects in contrast to the female subjects in which the DM patient tended to take in carbohydrates more than the non‐DM subjects. There were no significant differences in frequency of eating salted food between the DM and non‐DM subjects in both genders. The percentage of the subjects who usually drink broth of noodles such as ramen of which the soup contains a lot of salt was significantly lower in the male DM patients than that in the male non‐DM subjects but not in the female subjects. Estimated salt intake, however, was significantly higher in the male DM patients than that in the male non‐DM subjects. In the female subjects, salt intake also tended to be estimated higher in the DM patients than in the non‐DM subjects.

Conclusions

The dietary behaviors regarding calorie and sugar intake were generally consistent with estimated calorie, fat, and carbohydrate intake aside from a few exceptions. The DM patients consumed significantly more salt than the non‐DM subjects. This result, however, was inconsistent with the behavior regarding salt intake. In conclusion, these results suggest that the resolution of the gaps between perceived dietary behavior and actual nutritional intake are crucial for the success of dietary instruction for the prevention of exacerbation of DM.

Support or Funding Information

This study was supported in part by Grants‐in‐Aid for Young Scientist (B) 16K16300 from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript.

This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.