Diabetes and the Mediterranean or standard diet (DIAMOND) - A simplified Mediterranean diet-based intervention for patients with diabetes in a primary care setting.

The patients included will be randomly allocated into one of the two study arms namely the usual care (UC, n=30) and the Mediterranean Diet (MD, n=30) group. All patients: will receive an initial telephone call from the researcher that will be approx. 25-30 minutes. During this call intervention group (MD group) will receive a structured simplified MD-based nutrition intervention. This will be delivered by a primary care practitioner (either general practitioner or nurse practitioner) in the form of a one-to-one telephone consultation with the patient. No specific behavioural change counselling strategies will be used by the practitioner during the nutrition intervention (this is to keep the intervention simple and deliverable by any healthcare practitioner). The consultation delivering the intervention will take approx. 20 minutes and will provide education covering four key concepts in the MD diet (recommending the consumption of legumes, nuts, low glycemic index carbohydrates and fermented dairy). Following the telephone consultations, patients will be given a link to online resources including recipe ideas and visual reminders to facilitate intervention adherence. These resources are specifically developed for this study based on the Mediterranean diet pyramid. They will also receive fortnightly text messages summarising the health messages discussed during the telephone consultation for the 6-month intervention duration. During the last 5-10 minutes of the telephone call, participants will be reminded to make routine visits to the GP and perform routine blood tests. The participants' adherence to intervention will be determined by comparing the responses to the Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener questionnaire and a 24-hour dietary recall obtained (online) at the baseline and 6 months since recruitment.