[The diabetic at the table: pariah or model?].

Diet has long been part of the treatment. In fact modern dieting in diabetes comes only back 130 years ago with the description given by Apollinaire Bouchardat. He described how excessive glycosuria was observed in the postprandial periods and recommended a low carbohydrate diet. Along with the exclusion of simple sugars introduced 50 years later, the diabetic diet became a very restrictive one partly excluding the patients from normal social life event at home. Recent findings that carbohydrates should better represent 45 to 60% of the total daily caloric intake, that not all refined sugar are that "quick" nor particularly hyperglycaemic, along with the right use of mono-, poly- and saturated fat are now making the diabetic diet more flexible, more attractive, more eclectic. Nowadays we can say that the diet of a diabetic person (type 1 or 2) should follow is very comparable to that a non-diabetic person of the same age, sex, body weight and activity should also follow.