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Kids Food
Food - how it affects glucose in the blood
To understand how eating affects your child's glucose levels you need to know a little about how glucose arrives in and leaves the blood.
Where the glucose in your child's blood comes from.
There are two main sources of glucose in the blood:
- Digesting the carbohydrate in food: Carbohydrate foods are sugars and starches such as sweets or potatoes. Carbohydrates from the food your child eats are the main source of glucose in his or her blood. In the gut, carbohydrates are broken down into sugars, mainly glucose, and absorbed into the blood
- Glucose that the body produces: The body can also produce glucose internally from a special store in the liver, called glycogen
Glycogen is the body's emergency glucose store. If a person's blood glucose falls too low their liver immediately starts breaking down glycogen stores to make glucose.(Unfortunately it is unlikely that your child will have glycogen stores big enough to prevent a hypo.)
