When shopping for food it can be hard to make sense of exactly what ingredients are contained within the food.
This is especially hard when you are diabetic and have stricter diet requirements.
You should look at how much sugar, fat, salt and so on is in any food, and use recipes that are healthy for your condition and use healthy ingredients.
It is important that you create recipes that have the correct balance of the different food groups, and to find foods in the supermarket that match your requirements you could look at their GDA labelling.
Most foods will include a system on their packaging known as Guideline Daily Amount, or GDA, which shows exactly what is in the food: calorie count, sugars, fats, saturates and salt.
It gives a percentage value of how much of your daily guideline amounts of each of these your food contains.
It also gives the specific amount in grams and the number of calories.
These guidelines are based on the average adults.
For diabetics it is not useful to go on GDA labels alone.
The guidelines are average, and your needs will be different to those of the average person.
However, it will be a useful way of measuring what is in the food and whether it is a good option or not.
When cooking food you can use the GDA system to help find ingredients that are suitable for a diabetic diet.
In general, it will be safer for you to produce your own meals rather than using ready-meals or other prepared dishes.
You can buy your ingredients based on the GDA system, and use specially formulated diabetic diets to cook meals that you will enjoy and that will be safe for you to eat every day.