Diabetes 34 School Nurse News www.schoolnursenews.org November 2006 Real World Meal Planning Strategies for Children and Adolescents with Diabetes

You know the scenario. A child in your school has recently been diagnosed with diabetes and arrives in your of-fice with an individualized meal plan from the healthcare provider or a Registered Dieti-tian. The child’s meal plan tells you exactly how many carbohydrate (CHO) choices or grams of CHO have been prescribed for lunch, and perhaps for a snack. (Table 1 shows general carbohydrate choice recom-mendations for lunch and snacks.) The fam-ily or care givers also provides you with the child’s prescribed blood glucose targets, dia-betes medications, treatment recommenda-tions for high and low blood glucose levels, and guidelines about when to call the par-ents and/or the healthcare provider as wel