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食べたいものを好きなだけ食べる
seems to be weird for me because in my understanding this sentence mean
I just eat the food I like from the food that I want to eat
The complete sentence is as follows.
糖尿病の人は美味しい食品があったとしても、制限があるため食べたいものを好きなだけ食べることができない。
Could you explain how this sentence must be parsed?
食べたいもの = Things that I want to eat
好きなだけ食べる = eat as much as I want(like)
You might already know the expression 「好きにする」 which mean to do as one please.
This follows the same idea.
It means to eat the things that you want as much as you like.
This expression is usually used to express(complain) about how some people can eat all they want and not get fat while some are not that lucky.
I somehow understand that non-native could (mis)interpret the phrase 好きなだけ as "only things I like", which is not the actual meaning.
食べたいものを好きなだけ食べる
For the first sentence, the actual meaning is "to eat as much food as [I] want to eat".
In particular, 好きなだけ refers to "as much as one like" and doesn't mean "only things I like". The latter may be translated from other similar sentence i.e. 好きな物だけ食べる that is more certain to mean a noun rather than an adjective/adverb in the former.
Then, the complete sentence shall be parsed as below.
糖尿病の人は美味しい食品があったとしても、制限があるため食べたいものを好きなだけ食べることができない。
For diabetic patients, even delicious food is made available, [the patients] cannot eat as much as [they] want (like) because of the [diabetic diet] restriction.
As a foreigner learning Japanese, I was told that 好きなだけ means "as much as you like." So the literal translation would be "Eat as much as you want of the things you want to eat."
''People with diabetes can not eat anything they want to eat as much as they like, because there are restrictions, even if there are delicious foods.''
-Google translate
