Nutrition for Diabetes: Nutritional Approaches for the Treatment of Diabetes
The old adage ‘You are what you eat’ needs significant amendment, considering the rapidly advancing understanding of the substantial impact of nutrition on health. At the very least, the adage may be modified to ‘YOU ARE what, when, and how much you eat, in what form you eat and even what your parents or grandparents ate’. We now know that not only ‘what’ you eat, but the micro- and macronutrient amounts and diet composition, biological clock, and degree of food processing, may influence your health. Not only your own diet, but that of your mother during pregnancy, or even that of grandparents, seems to influence the health of the progeny. Just as food may influence your health, you may influence the type of food you consume. In that sense, it may be stated that “You eat what you are”. Bio-behavior of food choice, taste and other preferences, social and economic status, geography, culture, religious, racial and ethnic practices, politics and policies, climate, genetic and epigenetic makeup and microbes in the gut and elsewhere may impact health by influencing what you eat. A mere hundred years ago, who would have thought that this simple adage would be so nuanced. These various nutrition-related factors influence the onset, duration or progress and prognosis of many chronic diseases. Diabetes is a prime example of such a chronic disease that is greatly impacted by nutrition in so many ways. This special issue is planned to promote understanding about the role nutrition can play in diabetes, and also to underscore the limitations and knowledge gaps around the scope of nutrition in impacting diabetes. Nutrition & Diabetes (NUTD) has been at the forefront of research into all aspects of nutrition in diabetes. Some of the recent NUTD publications include as varied topics as the role of olive oil, walnut, flavonoids, or antioxidant properties of the Mediterranean diet in diabetes. The special issue ‘Nutrition in Diabetes’ includes articles about the role of chrononutrition, macronutrients, dietary supplements or the acceptance-based behavior therapy in type 2 diabetes. NUTD will continue to encourage papers on the most novel research into nutritional aspects of diabetes.
