Is there a way to add an item to the navigation menu which it's only shown to specific roles?

I'm wondering which would be the way to create a function on the templeate to just check if a menu item can be shown depending on the role and how would I use it? I think menu items don't have an option as blocks have to add conditions with php code.

What I want to do is to show some items on the navigation menu to specific roles. Of course items that I would create.

I've seen that video module and blog module already has something like this, but it shouldn't be hard to just create a function and to do some theming for this specific problem.. would it?