I've eaten my way through more than forty countries with Type 1 diabetes.
I've stood in front of Bangkok and Taiwanese night markets at 10pm with absolutely no idea what I was looking at, negotiated seven-course degustation menus in Italy without a carb count in sight, and made it through two weeks eating my way across Japan — where the food is extraordinary, the portions are precise, and white rice is essentially unavoidable.
And through all of it, I've kept my blood sugar reasonably in check.
"Reasonably" is doing a fair bit of work in that sentence, and I mean it honestly.
Eating abroad with diabetes is never a clean, predictable experience. You will miscalculate. You'll get a surprise spike from something you were certain would be fine. And there will be that one moment — CGM alarming, sitting somewhere unfamiliar, realising your glucose tabs are back at the hotel — where you feel it all at once.
I've been there. More than once.
But here's what twenty-plus years of travelling with Type 1 has taught me: eating your way through a new place is one of the genuine joys of travel, and it is absolutely worth the extra thought it takes. Food is how you understand where you are. And diabetes — once you stop fighting it and start working with it — doesn't have to hold you back from any of it.
Here's what I've actually learned. Through trial, error, and a whole lot of meals that went sideways in interesting ways.
👉 Food is just one piece of the puzzle when you're travelling with diabetes. If you're still putting together your overall plan — medications, documentation, what to pack — our complete guide to travelling with diabetes covers everything from your pre-trip checklist to managing supplies on the road.
The carb count is never what you think it is
Nobody tells you this clearly enough before your first big trip with diabetes.
The same dish, prepared differently in a different country, can hit your blood sugar in a completely different way.
And for Australians, there's a particular blind spot here. You eat a lot of Asian food at home. You grew up with it, and you are, by and large, pretty comfortable with it.
And then you get to Asia and realise that the pad thai you've been eating in Fitzroy for ten years and the pad thai you order from a cart in Chiang Mai are related but not identical — not in taste, and definitely not in what they do to your CGM.
A few examples that have genuinely caught me out over the years:
- Japanese white rice spikes me faster than almost anything else I eat. Not the Japanese-style rice I've had at home in Australia — something about the freshness, the variety, the way it's cooked. I dose conservatively and correct later, every time without exception.
- Pasta in Italy is typically al dente, which digests more slowly than the softer versions we tend to eat at home. A gentler blood sugar rise than I expected the first time.
- Indian dal varies wildly depending on the lentil type, cooking time, and fat content. Same name, completely different outcomes.
- Mexican beans are slower than you'd ever guess — one of the more pleasant surprises of eating abroad with diabetes.
- Southeast Asian street sauces often contain far more sugar than the equivalent dish back home. The laksa you love at your local in Surry Hills is not the same as the laksa you'll eat in Penang — and your blood sugar will let you know.
None of this is an argument for avoiding any of it. It's an argument for approaching it with curiosity rather than anxiety.
💡 My number one rule when eating abroad: start with a slightly conservative insulin dose, eat, and watch. I'd rather deal with a mild high a couple of hours later than go low in a restaurant where no one speaks English.
Do your research before departure — not when you're standing in front of foods you can't read
Before any new trip, I usually spend at least an hour researching the local food landscape. Not to restrict myself — but to arrive with some context. I want to know:
- What are the main carbohydrate staples in this cuisine?
- Does the local food culture add sugar to savoury dishes? (It does, consistently, across Southeast Asia — more than most people expect.)
- Are meals eaten on a schedule, or is the eating culture more continuous throughout the day?
- Are portions generous or restrained?
- What's the local equivalent of a safe, reliable low-GI option when things get unpredictable?
The most useful food intelligence I've found consistently comes from online diabetes communities — places where real people share real blood sugar outcomes from specific dishes in specific countries. Type 1 forums are full of Australians and other travellers who've road-tested everything from pho in Vietnam to injera in Ethiopia to tagine in Morocco.
Arriving in Japan already knowing that ramen broth often contains hidden sugars — and that tonkotsu and miso ramen will behave differently on your CGM — means you're not starting from scratch at every single meal.
That kind of preparation is worth more than any food restriction you could put on yourself.
👉 Flying to your destination? Our guide on airport security rules for diabetic travellers in Australia is worth reading before you even reach the terminal — covering scanner safety and your rights at the checkpoint.
Always carry fast-acting carbs. Every single time, no exceptions.
This sounds obvious. And yet.
When you're travelling, it's remarkably easy to get comfortable. You're on holiday, you feel good, you've been walking all day, everything is fine. And somehow your glucose tabs end up on the bedside table back at the hotel. I've done it. Once. That was enough.
Now I keep glucose tabs in every bag, every jacket pocket, every daypack I travel with. When I'm overseas, I double my usual supply — because I know I'll be more active than usual, eating at irregular times, and I will almost certainly miscalculate at least one meal. That's not pessimism. That's just experience.
Local options exist in most places — a bottle of juice, a soft drink, something sweet from a convenience store. But in an actual hypo, you want something familiar, in a dose you know, that you're certain will work. Don't rely on finding a 7-Eleven at exactly the right moment. They're everywhere in Japan and Thailand. They are not everywhere in the World.
And when you're travelling from Australia — where you might be twelve or eighteen hours from home before you've even left the region — running short on supplies isn't an inconvenience. It's a genuine problem.
Getting through restaurant meals when language is a barrier
This is where years of travel have forced me to get genuinely resourceful. A few things that actually work:
✅ Learn a handful of words in the local language. "No sugar," "without sauce," and "what's in this?" will get you further than you'd expect almost anywhere in the world. Google Translate's camera function — point your phone at a menu, get an instant translation — has become completely indispensable. Download the language pack before you leave so it works offline. In rural areas or countries with limited mobile coverage, offline access isn't a nice-to-have, it's essential.
✅ Ask for sauces on the side. This is where hidden sugars tend to live, especially across Asian cuisines. Getting sauces separately lets you control how much goes on — or leave them off entirely without making a scene.
✅ Don't be afraid to eat simply. Some of my best diabetes meals while travelling have been the most straightforward: grilled fish on a Greek island, a mezze spread in Lebanon, plain rice and pickled vegetables in a small restaurant in Kyoto. Simple food, eaten thoughtfully, is almost never boring.
✅ Talk to the restaurant. This works better than most people expect, almost everywhere. Locally-owned restaurants cooking from scratch are usually genuinely happy to explain what's in a dish, adjust a preparation, or point out what's sweeter on the menu. You might need a translation app to bridge the gap, but the willingness is almost always there.
👉 Headed somewhere with a long flight? Our guide on managing insulin across time zones covers how to adjust your schedule when crossing multiple time zones — something that can throw off even well-managed regimens.
Buffets, street food, and the beautiful chaos of eating somewhere new
Buffets are simultaneously a diabetic's dream and a diabetic's nightmare.
- The dream: full visibility, total control over portions, the ability to load up on protein and quietly leave the white rice alone.
- The nightmare: unlimited quantities, fifteen things to estimate at once, and a very easy path to eating considerably more than you planned.
💡 My buffet rule, developed over many years and many buffets: plate everything before injecting the bolus. Decide what you're eating first, then dose for it. It sounds almost too simple. It works every time.
Street food is a different matter entirely — and one of the things I love most about travelling. I eat it freely, I enjoy it without guilt, and I accept that my blood sugar will probably do something unexpected. A correction dose later is not a failure of blood sugar management. It's the price of eating the best bowl of noodles you've ever had from a stall with no name in a city you've never been to before. Worth it. Every time.
The imprecision is part of it. Make your peace with that early and the whole travel experience becomes more enjoyable.
Heat, alcohol, and the two things that affect blood sugar more than the food itself
Two factors consistently affect blood sugar when I'm abroad more than almost any specific dish: heat and alcohol. Both catch people out. Both are worth understanding before you're in the middle of them.
Heat increases insulin absorption meaningfully. Australians should understand this better than most — we know what genuine heat feels like. But even so, I've been surprised by how differently my insulin behaves in sustained tropical heat compared to a warm summer day at home. A week in Bangkok in April, or a fortnight in northern India in May, is a different physiological experience to a hot day in Melbourne. Insulin works faster, its duration shortens, and sensitivity can shift noticeably from one day to the next. I typically reduce my basal slightly in the first few days of any hot-climate trip and watch my overnight numbers carefully until I understand how my body is responding.
Alcohol — particularly wine and spirits — causes delayed hypoglycaemia, often hours after drinking, often overnight. When you're travelling and more likely to be drinking with meals, staying out later, eating at irregular times, and sleeping somewhere unfamiliar, this risk is higher than it is at home. I always eat a full meal alongside alcohol, never drink on an empty stomach abroad, and run a slightly higher overnight blood glucose target when I've had wine with dinner. A bigger pre-bed snack is usually the right call.
👉 Heat doesn't just change how insulin works in your body — it affects whether your insulin is still effective when you need it. Our guide on how to keep insulin cool when travelling covers temperature management from the moment you leave home.
Your medication has to travel as well as you do
All the meal planning and preparation in the world only works if your insulin — or Ozempic, Mounjaro, or whatever else you're on — is actually viable when you need it.
Insulin that's been sitting in a hot hire car, or packed in checked luggage in an unheated cargo hold, or stored in a hotel mini-fridge that's barely colder than the room outside it, is insulin you cannot rely on. And when you're on the other side of the world, far from any chemist you know, that is not a comfortable situation.
After years of improvising with wet cloths, insulated lunch bags, and hotel ice in a plastic bag — the kind of arrangement that works until it doesn't — investing in a proper medical travel cooler was the most practically significant change I've made to how I travel. My medication is in the same condition when I arrive as when I left. Every single time. That reliability is worth more than I can easily quantify.
👉 And if things go further wrong than an unexpected blood sugar spike from a mystery sauce, our guide to diabetes emergencies abroad covers severe hypos and DKA — what to watch for, what to do, and how to prepare before you leave Australia.
Eating abroad is one of the best things about travelling — and diabetes doesn't change that
I want to end here, because I think it matters more than anything else in this article.
Managing diabetes abroad is genuinely more complicated than managing it at home. The food is less predictable, there are rarely nutrition labels, your routine disappears, and some days you'll get it completely wrong. That's not a failure. That's travel.
The question was never whether you can eat freely abroad with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes. The question is whether you go in with the right tools, the right knowledge, and the right attitude.
I've eaten tagliatelle in Bologna and laksa in Penang. I've had mezze in Beirut and slow-cooked lamb in a small restaurant in Marrakech that had no menu and no prices on the wall. I've had blood sugar readings that made no sense at all, and I've had meals I still think about years later.
I have never once wished I'd stayed home.
Go. Eat. Bring your glucose tabs. And let the CGM alarm occasionally — it means you're somewhere interesting.
💬 We Want to Hear From You!
Eating abroad with diabetes looks different for everyone — different destinations, different management approaches, different relationships with food and unpredictability. If you've found something that works brilliantly, had a meal that completely blindsided you, or have a country you're quietly nervous about visiting, share it below.
Where has your blood sugar surprised you — for better or worse? Any hard-won restaurant tricks, carb-counting hacks, or lessons from the road? The more honestly we share, the easier it gets for everyone in this community.
