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Do you take the IF food off of the cheat sheet and cook them with the peel intact, Maria? I mostly eat black beans and blueberries and I can't really peel those, which is why I usually blend them. I get the IF from the peel, but by blending or mashing it gets broken down enough to make digestion easier. In the summer, after a meal, I'll usually have a small nectarine or plum as dessert; depending on what I ate before or how I'm feeling that week, I'll leave the peel on and do fine. Probably the most difficult peel for me to digest is apple peel. Also, when I was in college I used to snack on Gerber Baby Food products, like plums and the blended fruit or vegetable purees; I know some other people on the boards have tried this. I'm not sure how much IF that actually had though, and I couldn't find any nutrional info online, but the little containers of pureed food made it easy to take on trips or to work. There are other insolubles that I can tolerate but I know many people can't. For example:
**Broccoli, which I buy a frozen bag of, then microwave two-four florets until it's easy to chop and mash with a fork. I started with one floret, cooked and mashed, and then increased as I became stable. I always eat it with pasta. However, I WOULD NOT recommend this to anyone who IS NOT STABLE or has problems with gas.
**Bell peppers, which I chop very finely and mix with rice, couscous, or add to something like safe macaroni salad.
**corn, chopped onion, chopped tomatoes (seeded & peeled if possible) I use as you would a condiment, maybe a T of one of these added to my mashed beans or bean dip.


And would the pureed cooked green beans still be IF? what I'm confused about is if cooking also takes away the IF factor. I don't really eat a lot of green beans, but I think cooking takes away some IF but not all. I don't know if zucchini is SF inside. Could be since it is in the squash family. So even with the skin, the amount of IF could be minimal. That's what I was thinking too! When you cook your zucchini, do you add in your mushrooms raw? But they are SF anyhow so even raw wouldn't help me with IF. No, it probably wouldn't help, but it tastes good.

Wouldn't your peeled apples in your salad take away the IF? Yes, but the peel really bothers me. Sometimes I leave the peel, if the salad is for bf and me, and I can have about one slice of apple and feel okay. I'm afraid to try anymore than that even though I just get gassy, not really an IBS attack. It's just another one of those personalized IBS things, I guess.

BTW, which IF foods wouldn't need to be cooked? I'm thinking blueberries and canned pineapple(if blended or pureed), tomatoes (seeded; if chopped and not eaten, in large quantities I can tolerate the skin), nut butters, bell peppers (chopped finely). The sulfur-rich foods, like broccoli, I'll only eat well-cooked and mashed. That's all I can think of for now...

Sorry so dense on this this morning. I'm having a bad week with personal problems (I'll explain later). I'm sorry you're having a tough week. And I don't think you're dense! This is a tough subject to understand, especially when the nutrional information for so many items just lumps both types of fiber as "dietary fiber." I think I'm really on to something with this and why I'm still so constipated and why H's diet hasn't worked so well for me. Because I haven't been doing it correctly, even though I thought I was! I keep learning new things too! I feel like you're on the right track as well! And you're asking really good questions that are getting me to think about what I'm eating and how I'm eating and really read and comprehend what Heather has outlined. I feel like I have a better grasp on IF and SF just by discussing it with you!

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