Abstract:
Introduction: Dietary management which is considered to be one of the
cornerstones of diabetes care is based on the principle of healthy eating in the
context of social, cultural and psychological influences on food choice. A type II
diabetes diet and following the right meal plan can make all the difference to a
person struggling to keep his/her blood sugar under control.
Objective: To assess level of dietary practice and its associated factors among type
II diabetic patients from Yekatit 12 Medical College Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Methods: Institution based cross-sectional quantitative study design was employed.
A total of 403 study subjects were included in the study. Pretested questionnaire
were used to collect the data. The collected data were entered in to Epi Info version
3.5.3 and exported to SPSS version 20.0 software packages for further statistical
analysis. The data was analyzed using bivariate and multivariate logistic regression.
The degree of association between dependent and independent variables were
assessed using odds ratio with 95%confidence interval and p-value ≤0.05.
Results: About 73% of the patients did not check their fasting blood glucose on a
daily basis. About 46.4 % of the study subjects were overweight and obese. More
than half of the respondents (58.8%) had FBG level ≥ 126mg/dl. The level of dietary
practice among 207 (51.4%) type II diabetic patients was poor. Not getting nutrition
education in hospitals [AOR=4.47, 95%CI: (1.92,10.40)], having depression [AOR=
2.15, 95% CI: (1.14,4.02)], difficulty to choose foods [AOR= 9.66 ,95%CI:
(5.12,18.24)], non- availability of fruits and vegetables [AOR= 2.78, 95%CI:
(1.03,7.54)], thinking about high cost of foods [AOR= 2.36,95%CI: (1.18, 4.70)] were
the factors significantly associated with the poor dietary practice .
Conclusion and recommendations: findings of this study indicated that majority
patients had poor dietary practice. Therefore, the integration of diabetic based
nutrition education with motivation and home gardening is highly recommended.
