Dietary fat and diabetes: a consensus view

There may be no area in nutrition more controversial or subject to more changes in policy than dietary fat recommendations for individuals with diabetes. At one extreme, diets very low in carbohydrates with very high levels of fat were advocated in the early days of diabetes therapy. At the other extreme, the literature in the late 1980s and early 1990s emphasized diets very low in fat and high in carbohydrates. This conference has shown that too much information is missing for a definitive recommendation to be made concerning diet composition for diabetic individuals, but it also has led to the realization that we may now have considerable flexibility in our dietary recommendations for individuals with diabetes.