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Counting carbohydrates

Carbohydrates (carbs) are in:

  • starchy foods such as bread, potatoes, rice, pasta and cereals
  • sugary foods such as sweets, jellies, biscuits and cakes
  • dairy foods such as milk and yoghurts
  • fruit and honey

Counting carbs helps you manage your blood glucose levels.

When you know how many carbs you eat and drink, you calculate the right dose of quick-acting insulin.

This means you do not have to inject and eat at the same time every day (fixed dose), so your treatment is more flexible.

Learn how to count carbs

You can start learning about carb counting you can:

Eating well with type 1 diabetes (PDF, 39 pages 1.8KB) - indi.ie

Find out more about carb counting - diabetes.org.uk

Courses on counting carbs

Courses about counting carbohydrates:

Page last reviewed: 17 October 2023
Next review due: 17 October 2026

This project has received funding from the Government of Ireland’s Sláintecare Integration Fund 2019 under Grant Agreement Number 9.