Class: Diet

Description of: Diet

Class steward is Orders/Observation
Diet services are very much like supply services, with some aspects resembling Medication services: the detail of the diet is given as a description of the Material associated as a target of type product. Medically relevant diet types may be communicated in the Diet.type_cd, however, the detail of the food supplied and the various combinations of dishes should be communicated as Material instances.

Attribute definitions for: Diet

carbohydrate_qty :: PQ

For diabetes diet one typically restricts the amount of metabolized carbohydrates to a certain amount per day (e.g., 240 g/d). This restriction can be communicated in the carbohydrate_qty.

OpenIssue: Unclear whether the same should not be expressed as associated observations in goal mood (observation.type_cd = carbohydrate intake.)

energy_qty :: PQ

The most important medically relevant parameter of a diet order is the supplied biologic energy (Calories) per day. This value may be specified in the Diet.energy_qty attribute as a physical quantity. This physical quantity should be convertible to 1 kcal/d (or 1 kJ/d.) Note, that there is a lot of confusion about what is a "calorie." There is a "large Calorie" and a "small calorie." On "nutrition facts" labels, the large "Calories" is used. More appropriately, however, one should use the small calorie, which is 1/1000 of a large Calorie. In the Unified Code for Units of Measure, the proper unit symbol for the large calorie is "[Cal]" and for the small calorie it is "cal", or, more commonly used as a kilo-calorie "kcal".