Carbohydrate counting can help your child’s diabetes control - but what is it and how does it work?

Carbohydrate counting is a vital part of making the most of intensive diabetes management, whether your child uses injections or a pump (it is less likely to be used on mixed insulin regimens).

Carbohydrate counting means that insulin can be individually matched to your child’s food choice at the time of eating. It means portion sizes can reflect a child’s appetite rather than a fixed amount of carbohydrate to feed a fixed amount of insulin. It does not mean total food freedom as this would be unhealthy for any child, although special occasions and treat foods can be more easily incorporated and insulin adjusted to match.

Giving insulin for carbohydrate foods does not mean that their fat and calorie content disappear, so making healthy food choices is still important. Carbohydrate counting can mean more work at first -assessing or weighing foods to calculate the amount of carbohydrate, but it becomes easier as you become more skilled and used to it. As your child becomes older, these skills will need to be shared with them too.