A healthy diet remains the primary means to prevent chronic diseases among those with prediabetes.
Dr Raymond Lim, Senior Lecturer, and Associate Professor Wong Mee Lian conducted a study with 433 pre-diabetic patients to assess factors associated with fulfilling the Health Promotion Board’s My Healthy Plate recommendation, and to explore reasons for their behaviour.
It was found that only 57.3 per cent of the patients followed the recommendations, of which nearly 90 per cent of the respondents were married.
Married individuals were more likely to report meeting the recommendations compared to those who were single. In-depth interviews suggested that this could be due to family influence, particularly spousal influence, as it was usually the wife in the household who decided on the groceries to buy and the food to be served during mealtimes.
Other recurrent themes for meeting the recommendation included self-discipline, fear of disease complications, education by healthcare professionals, mass media influence and health promotion campaigns.
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