The Diabetes Diet: Making a Healthy Eating Plan

The global prevalence of diabetes continues to increase, making it one of the fastest-growing public health emergencies of the 21st century. Poorly controlled diabetes markedly increases morbidity and mortality and predisposes individuals to cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, neuropathy, retinopathy, and other serious complications. Effective management, therefore, requires integrated strategies that address glycemic control, modifiable behaviors, and comorbid conditions.

This Reprint gathers evidence-based research, practical reviews, and translational perspectives on dietary strategies to prevent and manage diabetes across the human lifespan, linking food choices, dietary patterns, and specific nutrients to glucose control, cardiometabolic risk, body composition, and quality of life in people with or at risk for diabetes. It emphasizes patient-centered care, ranging from personalized medical nutrition therapy and culturally adapted meal plans to scalable public-health interventions, and highlights emerging topics such as plant-forward and low-carbohydrate patterns, dietary fats and protein quality, meal timing and intermittent fasting, gut microbiota-diet interactions, and strategies to address comorbidities and health inequities. This Reprint synthesizes current evidence and identifies key gaps to guide future clinical trials and implementation research in diabetes nutrition.