Nutritional Information Packaging and the Diabetic

Having not written for some time about traveling with diabetes here's the first of a few thoughts. . .

In the US almost all food comes in a wrapper that has nutritional information printed on the outside. This information is very important to diabetics as diet is key to good blood sugar control. The particular piece of information that is important to healthy blood sugars is not the amount of sugar rather the amount of carbohydrates consumed. For me, a type 1 diabetic with an insulin pump I give one unit of insulin for every 15 grams of carbohydrate. This system allows me to eat whatever I want (including sugar) as long as I 'cover' the carbs with the right amount of insulin.

Back home in the US I didn't really need to check the information on packaging anymore, because I knew the food and the amount of insulin I would give. Traveling, you can imagine that I have run into foods unfamiliar to me. Normally this would not be a huge problem, I could find a grocery store and peruse the nutritional information on the back of packages to know what I was eating and what to bolus (giving insulin to cover food intake), but I have been dismayed to find that the nutritional information packaging both in Europe and in South Africa (if there is any at all) is inadequate. The nutritional information is there but only measured and stated for 100g even if the package is a different gram count. This would not be bad information if the package also included the gram serving size and how many servings were in a package, but without it, I find it irrelevant – having to make too many guesstimates and divisions or multiplications to get an accurate number that would have been easy for them to put on the package in the first place. So I simply guess as to the carb amount I'm eating based on what I already know. Sometimes this works and sometimes I am really off. It makes me wonder what diabetics do in these countries and if I'm missing something. . .

Andrea