A tool for assessing compliance with a diet for diabetes.

In summary, criteria to define good, acceptable, and unacceptable compliance with a CONTROL or HCF diabetic diet were established. With the use of these criteria, a simplified system for the evaluation of compliance was developed. The compliance system used an interview approach and a checklist on which patients recorded their food intake in terms of the number of food exchanges consumed throughout the day. The results of this study suggest that (a) research subjects will keep accurate food records using a checklist system for up to 30 weeks; (b) the described compliance system is a valuable educational tool and can assist in the interpretation of clinical data used in diabetes management; and (c) the assigned compliance grades correlate with quantitative parameters of diabetic control.