Jake: I thought I'd just answer a part of your post I didn’t see addressed; of course it’s kind of difficult to follow the posts, so I may have missed it.

You asked: “ I saw “no sugar ice cream” and sugar free candy. Could he have either of those?”

What matters when you have diabetes is the carbs, which is what will send blood sugar high. I myself keep to around 40-45 carbs per meal. If you look at most labels, the low sugar or no sugar version of candy, ice cream, etc often has higher carbs than the sugar version.

Many of these snacks have over 20 carbs per serving or higher, so would you rather have a bowl of ice cream and not eat a meal? That’s what I thought.

It doesn’t mean all snacks are off limits. I ofter have a hard candy like Werthers, Brachs, etc before exercising to give me a little energy boost, as most have only about 4 to 5 carbs per piece. And there are a few low-carb ice cream types; Breyers Carb-Smart chocolate covered ice cream bars have 11 g carbs minus 3 g fiber (8 net carbs) which is a nice snack.

Learn to read the label before you buy, take into account how many servings per pack, carbs per servings, etc. Often the numbers highlighted on the front are come-ons, as a normal piece would be counted as multiple servings.

Hope that helps.
Howard