Many things in Heather's diet agree with the FODMAP approach. For example, she recommends avoiding foods containing high fructose corn syrup, dried fruit and concentrated apple/pear juices. Excess fructose is one of the five FODMAP groups. She also recommends avoiding dairy particularly if you are lactose intolerant. Lactose is another one of the five FODMAP groups. BTW- these two intolerance can be tested by a breath test as well as using dietary an elimination.
If you check her some of her latest write-ups for example Are Artificial Sweeteners IBS Trigger Foods? Yes! you will notice she mentions FODMAPs in 3rd from last bullet point. And if you check out my exchange with her a few weeks ago you will note that FODMAPs are on her agenda for when she updates her book.
I believe you may have misinterpreted the FODMAP dietary approach. It does not consist of a list of things you can and cannot eat. It does group problematic foods into five groups by well defined characteristics. It has been clinically tested on large numbers of functional GI suffers which includes individuals with IBS. All trials to date show 70-80% of people experience an improvement in symptoms. It is relatively new approach developed by a dietitian and GI doctor in Australia and the first clinical results were published about 3 years ago (see second link in my signature). Since then many clinical trials have been carried out throughout the world showing similar beneficial results. There is are a couple of write-ups in Heather's research library - here is one example. The results have some impressive that prestigious universities like King's College London are putting on courses for healthcare professionals.
Generally speaking, the FODMAP approach is an elimination/re-introduction approach to identifying FODMAP triggers. The objective is to help you tailor make a dietary approach that suits the characteristics of your GI disorder. It removes foods from FODMAP groups for 4-8 weeks and then re-introduces foods from one groups at time. This way you learn which food groups you can handle a lot of, which you can handle a little or moderate amount and which you cannot tolerate at all.
One difficulty with the FODMAP information is that some low FODMAP fruits and veggies from Australia are high or moderate level FODMAPs in North American fruits and veggies. Partly because the varieties and growing conditions differ. Hopefully this will clear up soon as there is a lot of lab analysis on common foods for the FODMAP levels in progress.
The unfortunate thing I find is the most advocated of the FODMAP approach don't cover the basics of common GI triggers as well as Heather does. I look forward to her next book which I hope will bring her usual balanced approach to managing IBS symptoms including updated information on FODMAPs.
I hope this helps clarify thing a bit for you.
-------------------- STABLE: ♂, IBS-D 50+ years - Science of IBS
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Re: The FODMAP aproach seems really opossed to Heather's books
