Topics
Food and type 1 diabetes
What each kind of food does to blood sugar, why pizza is different from bread, and how to help without policing anyone's plate.
This section is for people who have just been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and for the people around them: parents, partners, friends, hosts and caretakers. Nobody here is going to tell you what you may eat. That is the expectation most people arrive with, so it is worth clearing up first.
There is no diabetic diet. No forbidden list, no special aisle. People with type 1 can eat what everyone else eats, birthday cake included, given the right insulin at roughly the right time.
What changes isn't what goes on the plate. It's that somebody now has to estimate what's in it, and do the job a pancreas used to do silently, three or four times a day, forever.
The pages below explain what each part of a meal does to blood sugar, why a rich meal can push numbers up hours later, how to read a Canadian Nutrition Facts table, what to keep on hand for a low, and how family and hosts can help without hovering.
- What each part of a meal does to blood sugarCarbohydrate, protein, fat and fibre each act on blood sugar differently. Where carbs hide, and which foods need no insulin dose.
- Insulin timing and the late rise after rich mealsWhy dosing a little before eating helps, why pizza behaves differently from bread, and what care teams do about the delayed rise.
- Glycemic index and fibreWhat the glycemic index can and can't tell you, where diabetes bodies disagree about it, and the two jobs fibre does at once.
- Reading a Canadian Nutrition Facts tableOne Canadian rule makes labels simple: Carbohydrate is already the total. How to handle sugars, fibre, sugar alcohols and serving size.
- Lows, alcohol and sick days: the food sideWhat to eat to treat a low, why alcohol causes delayed lows, and how to get carbohydrate and fluids in when you're too sick to eat.
- Celiac disease, thyroid and going gluten-freeWhy celiac and thyroid screening are routine in type 1, and why a gluten-free diet can make blood sugar bumpier before it settles.
- Hosting and kids' partiesPractical tips for cooking for someone with type 1, the dinner-delay problem, and how to handle birthday cake, loot bags and kids' parties.
- Food myths, and not being the diabetes policeFive things people still say about type 1 and food, why they're wrong, and better sentences for family and friends to use instead.