Is Your Food Irritating You?
These pesky substances in the food you’re eating could be at war with your digestion.
Having struggled and suffered with food issues for years, I was so ready for a quick fix when I came across the ‘FODMAP’ concept. I was all in. Terminology, complexity, nothing stopped me because it felt like at long last I would have answers — most importantly, a straightforward one for the waiter asking if I had any food issues.
FODMAPS are irritating in many ways
A “FODMAP” is a substance that causes digestive problems in people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). But the most irritating thing about FODMAPs is that knowing the term and what it means does little to help you manage your symptoms!
I devoured everything Monash University, the FODMAP experts, had to offer. But it soon became clear that I was chasing a “straightforward” rainbow. There is no golden rule of thumb, food sensitivities are personal. So, my bestie and I decided to go the long, scenic (uncomfortable, frequently embarrassing) route to figuring out our specific food sensitivities.
The FODMAP categories are a good place to start your food journey
The name is an acronym for four groups of substances that cause digestive symptoms. These substances are found in a wide range of foods in differing concentrations and combinations; they affect sensitive foodies differently and they’re not the only substances to cause problems. That’s why I find the FODMAP categorization largely academic. But it did actually help us quite a bit on our food journey.
We used them as a basis for experimenting with foods and a starting point for confirming a sensitivity when we found we reacted to something. It also helped us understand why certain foods can cause issues, which quantities might cause problems and which sister or cousin foods might also be an issue.
So if you’re like me, even with your rose-colored / quick-fix glasses shattered, you’ll still want to know what all the fuss is about.
Fermentable
The two common and problematic features of all FODMAPs are that they can be fermented by bacteria and that they are difficult to digest, some more than others. If they’re not digested, FODMAPs continue through the digestive tract to the large intestine where most of our gut bacteria live.
Those critters have a field day feeding and essentially farting up a storm — the hydrogen they produce during fermentation is what causes painful bloating. The large intestine is also responsible for absorbing water from food remnants, to compact it into firm stool, but the presence of these substances can draw water into the intestine causing diarrhoea.
Oligosaccharides
This is the group that the fructans of grain and gluten fame belong to. And that’s about all the technical gibberish you need to know. The key takeout is the range of foods that are likely to cause problems if you’re sensitive to this group:
- Breads and grains with gluten
- Beans
- Cruciferous veg (broccoli, kale, spinach, etc)
- Onions, garlic and related ‘alliums’
Disaccharides
Lactose, found in dairy, is the main culprit here. Keep in mind that ‘dairy’ means milk from cows, goats and sheep. I learnt the hard way that they all contain lactose! Liquid milk products, or their concentrates (like evaporated milk), have the highest lactose content, then yoghurts, soft cheeses and creams.
Much to our delight, full fat products contain less lactose than low/no fat. Fats have historically gotten a bad rap healthwise but recent evidence¹ suggests they were framed. We don’t need further invitation, we look and ask for lovely, bloat-free, burp-free full fat cream whenever possible!
Monosaccharides
This one is pretty simple. Fructose is the sugar found in fruits and if you’re sensitive to it you’ll find that many fruits are not your friends. This is bestie’s nightmare but once she got over the fruit-shaming and identified primarily as a non-fruit person, she actually found a couple of options that are nice to her, albeit in moderation:
- Up to 10 strawberries or raspberries
- 1 mandarin or orange
- A handful of grapes
- Up to 20 blueberries
- 1/2 cup of cantaloupe or papaya
- 1/3 large ripe banana (less ripe bananas are better tolerated)
- 2 small kiwis
- Up to 1 cup of chopped pineapple
- The pulp of 1 passion fruit.
And
To make the acronym work!
Polyols
These are sorbitol, mannitol and xylitol. They’re found in a range of fruits and used as sugar replacements:
- Apples, pears and peaches
- Avocados
- Honey
- Artificial sweeteners
- Sugar-free gum or mints
Through the process of testing these and many more foods, we said many sad goodbyes to past food loves but we were also pleasantly surprised along the way as we fell in love with previously unappreciated food likes. Perhaps most impactful for us was the new mindfulness we naturally developed as we went through the FODMAP categories.
In the end, paying careful attention to everything we ate, becoming thoughtful about our meal combinations and, of course, saying “Yup, it’s a FODMAP!” at every symptom confirmation proved pivotal to our success. Just keep in mind that there are lots of other reasons for digestive symptoms and, conversely, reacting to one or two of the FODMAPs doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily react to all.
Content based on information from Monash University
¹Malhotra A, Redberg RF, Meier P. Saturated fat does not clog the arteries: coronary heart disease is a chronic inflammatory condition, the risk of which can be effectively reduced from healthy lifestyle interventions. British Journal of Sports Medicine 2017;51:1111–1112.
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