Assessment of food labeling knowledge and associated reading barriers among patients with diabetes

Abdullah M Alshahrani; Mohammed A Batais; Muhammad H Mujammami; Abdullah A Alrasheed; Turky H Almigbal; Mohammed Z Aljulifi; Ahmad K Aldosari; Nassr Almaflehi

doi:10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_1405_22

Assessment of food labeling knowledge and associated reading barriers among patients with diabetes

J Family Med Prim Care. 2023 Feb;12(2):264-269. doi: 10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_1405_22. Epub 2023 Feb 28.

Authors

Abdullah M Alshahrani¹, Mohammed A Batais², Muhammad H Mujammami³, Abdullah A Alrasheed², Turky H Almigbal², Mohammed Z Aljulifi⁴, Ahmad K Aldosari¹, Nassr Almaflehi⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Family Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Bisha, Saudi Arabia.
² Department of Family and Community Medicine, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
³ Department of Medicine, College of Medicine, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
⁴ Department of Family Medicine, College of Medicine, Majmaah University, Saudi Arabia.
⁵ Department of Periodontics, Dentistry College, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

Background: The most challenging part of diabetes management for a patient with diabetes is selecting a healthy diet. The purpose of this study is to evaluate participants' knowledge of food labels, to find out the relationship between the type of diabetes mellitus (DM) and knowledge score of food labels, and to explore the barriers that prevent patients from reading food labels.

Methodology: This observational study was conducted on patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes using a validated self-administered questionnaire. The study was conducted at diabetes clinics at King Khalid University Hospital and King Abdul-Aziz University Hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from November 2019 to February 2020. Data were analyzed using SPSS.

Results: A total of 310 participants were enrolled in this study, of which 50.3% had type 1 DM, and more than half of them were female (51.6%). Patients with type 1 DM had higher mean declarative and applied knowledge scores than those with type 2 DM, regardless of whether they were taking pre meals insulin or not. The highest proportion (39.9%) had difficulty in understanding the content of the nutrition labels, and some of them (37.2%) did not receive any educational session about it. Only 9.5% of the participants did not have any difficulties in reading food labels.

Conclusion: Patients with both types of diabetes tended to have poor total knowledge about food labels and faced difficulties in reading them. Provided educational sessions by primary health care and specialized physician and DM educator about food labels are recommended to help them to choose food properly.

Keywords: Barriers; diabetes mellitus; food label; knowledge.