Hey guys! Yesterday, I posted about a thorough Dietary Food Recall and I wanted to pop in today and discuss a common question: How long should I do the Food Recall? Personally, I prefer a 3-day Food Recall. This is not a set in stone guideline, it’s just a “Kimline”…see what I did there?! LOL!!!

In all honesty, a dietary recall can be done for any amount of time. A 24 hr, 3 day, 5 day, 7 day…really whatever suits your fancy. With a 24 hr recall, I find that it doesn’t allow enough time to gather information. It’s just not enough time. Anyone can eat well for one day but we need to see trends in their eating habits and you just can’t see that properly with just a day’s worth of information. There are instances where this may be beneficial. Maybe a patient had an abnormally spike in readings one day. Quickly going over the food intake with the patient is appropriate in this case.

A 5 or 7 day recall can exhaust the patient and decrease the efficacy of the recall. They may lose interest and forget to log food. With a 3 day recall, it’s just right…right in the middle. It allows us to pick up the trend without sacrificing efficacy and exhausting the patient.

I created a full video over a thorough food recall that dive into this a bit more so I’ll link that below. As an extra resource, here’s an example of a dietary recall HERE & HERE. If you have questions over how diabetics should eat, last week I posted about the Food Guidelines for Diabetes where I summarized the AACE guidelines. Check that out because it was packed with a lot of great information. Below is a FREE Food Guideline Cheat Sheet & the accompanying video of a thorough Dietary Food Recall from my YouTube channel, Kim E. The Diabetes NP. I would appreciate it if you SUBSCRIBED and followed me over on Instagram, @thediabetesnp.