So, first off, commercial salad dressing almost always has sugar in it. Look at the nutritional facts label next time you're shopping for it. There's a few brands that offer "simple vinegar and oil" style dressings that don't have any sugar in them, but MOST salad dressings Americans come in contact with are full of sugar.

Even low GI foods still cause blood sugar to raise by some amount.

All of the vegetables in the salad have carbohydrates that will raise blood sugar. Carrots, onions, tomatoes, all of that will raise blood sugar. Croutons? Blood sugar.

Obviously selecting a garden salad with no dressing is a healthier choice than "sweet ribs". Most diabetics (that are managing their condition) are not going to be ordering things with refined sugar in them.

Where things get tricky is asking questions like "what's healthier, a honey-miso glazed salmon with brown rice or a salad with croutons and a honey and berry dressing?" or "What's better for you, grilled chicken with a sugary barbeque sauce or fried chicken with no sauce?"

Not a diabetic but adult later onset lactose intolerant and the problem is you really have NO idea what restaurants put into stuff, even if you ask.

Even a stupid salad, what's in the dressing, what's in the bread/croutons, what was the meat glazed with. Etc.

Restaurant food tastes good because it is generally unhealthy top to bottom, with quantities of salt, butter, etc no sane person would use at home.

One thought experiment - when was the last time you ate out and needed to add salt to anything? Now thing of home cooking how often you might add a little salt while you are eating.

The easiest thing to do is ruling out restaurants entirely, but then that's rather anti-social.. Not to mention family/friends gatherings, etc.

>does choosing healthier meal,

For a type 1 diabetic, no (gets more complex with type 2).

Your body produces insulin at a basal rate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_rate

If you're healthy between the pancreas and the liver you maintain homeostasis and things are fine.

As a T1D you don't get that base rate, so your blood sugar will mostly trend up and stay high, even without eating anything. You simply have to get more insulin to avoid burning out all the systems in your body and dying slowly.

Is a really complex game. The basic reasoning is that for every X carbohydrates ingested, you need to inject Y insulin (according to a personal ratio).

However, everything is complicated by numerous factors and the technology you use.

Factors: how you feel, stress, exercise, what you ate in previous meals, your blood sugar level at the start of the meal, and the activities you’ll engage in after the meal (physical or mental).

There’s also the issue of how you administer insulin.

In Italy, up until 3-5 years ago, most of us were using the “multiple daily injections” method, which involved taking a dose of “long-acting” insulin (lasting 24 hours) as a “base” and using “rapid or ultra-rapid” insulin at meals. Clearly, this approach provides limited control and requires a VERY habitual lifestyle (you can’t skip a meal; the long-acting insulin keeps working regardless).

Now (at least here in Italy), we are all transitioning to or already using CGM systems, which are more or less intelligent systems that continuously administer insulin at a “medium” rate. Based on input from the patient regarding the predicted amount of carbohydrates (and fats) they will consume, the system calculates the best strategy for what is called the “meal bolus” (using strategies like multi-phase, direct, etc.) and at the same time, it maintains a continuous but adaptable level of injection to achieve a target blood sugar level (day and NIGHT!!)

In essence, it’s a very nerdy way of dying slowly (hopefully as slowly as possible).

È un mondo difficile E vita intensa Felicità a momenti E futuro incerto

Salad is great for diabetics. The problem is everything else:). Like for instance I've discovered that 99% of all rice is extremely bad, even good pasta is bad, potatoes are poison, bread also bad, and the list goes on. Fruits are bad too.

Cooking at home can be managed, and still heavily limiting. Eating out is a nightmare. First of all there are no "diabetes" places in the similar style to "vegan". And eating in a restaurant with at least some diabetes friendly selection of dishes is hard. For example there are may be 4 soup dishes. But 3 of them or even all will have either potatoes or pasta as ingredient (and leaving out said ingredient makes for a very mall meal, because those are often added to compensate). Salad section - the same issue, too often they have sweet syrup added for flavor. Anything Asian has rice or noodles in large quantities (I often wonder what diabetics in Asia eat). Second course dishes like meat or fish also sometimes contain sweet "surprises". All in all it is very hard task to find something, in a big city even.

This depends on a lot of factors. There are some type II diabetics like this: they might need insulin after a meal with a high glycemic index, but not after a meal with a low glycemic index. There are some type II diabetics with more advanced disease who need insulin after eating anything. Type I diabetics entirely lose their ability to make insulin, which is why the disease was fatal before insulin was discovered, no matter what the kids (it was almost always kids) ate or didn’t eat. As a general rule, it is inaccurate to equate diabetes with unhealthy eating. The Venn diagram only overlaps.

Healthier isn't a good metric, A carb heavy salad will probably be worse than those protein heavy ribs by themselves (Maybe the rib sauce will tip you over, or maybe you will use a salad dressing that put any "healthiness" to the test)