Taking the Biscuit? A Discursive Approach to Managing Diet in Type 2 Diabetes

Adopting and maintaining a healthy diet is pivotal to diabetic regimens. Behavioural research has focused on strategies to modify/maintain healthy behaviours; thus compliance and noncompliance are operationalized by researchers. In contrast, discursive psychology focuses on the actions different accounts accomplish in this case regarding diets. Using thematic discourse analysis, we examine dietary management talk in repeat-interviews with 40 newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes patients. Women in our study tended to construct dietary practices as an individual concern, while men presented food consumption as a family matter. Participants accounted for ?cheating? in complex ways that aim to accomplish, for instance, a compliant identity. Discursive psychology may facilitate fluidity in our understandings of dietary management, and challenge fixed notions of compliant and non-compliant diabetes patients.