Endocrine Abstracts

Objectives: To assess whether nutrition education via the Filipino Plate Method ‘Pinggang Pinoy’ will be effective in developing better meal planning skills and 2-Hour Post Prandial Blood Sugar levels (2h-PPBS), comparable to standard nutrition education as recommended by the ADA.

Research design and method: The Filipino Plate Method ‘Pinggang Pinoy’ is a simple tool for nutrition advise and would only take approximately 15 minutes to teach as compared to the Standard Nutrition Advise which is more complicated and take as long as 90 minutes to teach. We enrolled a total of 148 Type 2 Diabetic subjects, with 113 participants (76%) completing up to the 2-Hour Post Prandial Blood Sugar levels (2 h-PPBS) determination. The participants were divided into two groups, wherein baseline knowledge were gathered. After which they received two sets of lectures one being The Filipino Plate Method and the other group receiving the Standard Nutrition Advise. Post teaching assessment for both groups were done after 3–6 days, in which they have undergone the same process of data collection. The Post Teaching scores from the Pre Teaching scores were compared based on 3 parameters: Meal Planning Drawing scores, Actual Meal Scores and 2-Hour Post Prandial Blood Sugar levels (2 h-PPBS) results.

Results: Interms of the actual plate scores, wherein overall score significantly increased from pre-teaching to post-teaching, and within both groups (P < 0.001). Across groups, the Filipino Plate method group had a higher median score of 8/9 compared to 9/9 for the general education group (P = 0.018). In terms of meal planning scores, the overall score significantly increased from pre-teaching to post-teaching, and within both groups (P < 0.005). Across groups, the post-teaching scores were similar with a median of 5/10 (P = 0.274). On baseline and on post-teaching, the 2 h-PPBS absolute values were significantly higher for the general education group compared to Plate method group. Scores remarkably decreased from baseline to post-teaching. However, the relative change, had insufficient evidence to demonstrate a statistically significant difference in 2 h-PPBS values between the two groups.

Conlusion: The Filipino Plate method ‘Pinggang Pinoy’ may improve meal planning skills, actual meal choices and proportions and may improve 2-Hour Post Prandial Blood Sugar, and maybe comparable to the Standard Nutrition Advise in patients with Type 2 Diabetes.