Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | I think there's a lot you can eat under the EFI guidelines (m)

Who did the bloodwork? It sounds like you need some more information from them, especially about what a couple of the allergens actually are and, more generally, what a "slight" allergy means. Does it mean you should avoid that food at all costs or just that you shouldn't eat it too often? This is particularly crucial with regard to chocolate!

Okay, as for the specific foods you list:

On the EFI Diet you can certainly skip lettuce and pecans. I imagine you can probably just leave mushrooms out of a lot of dishes that call for them, like spaghetti sauce.

It seems to me that cane sugar would be the biggest problem, not in terms of the EFI Diet but in terms of food generally, because so many packaged foods contain sugar. I'd get more information on this. Is it sucrose you're allergic to or sugar from canes specifically? And, again, how "slight" is the allergy?

I have to agree that life would not seem worth living without chocolate, so again I'd want to know what a "slight" allergy means in terms of avoiding it. There is always carob which doesn't thrill me, but if my choice was between nothing even vaguely resembling chocolate and using carob as a substitute, I think I could learn to like it.

I avoid green pepper myself. An allergy to tuna is a shame because canned tuna is so easy, but for fish as an entree you can always eat salmon instead and for sandwiches you can eat a chicken salad rather than a tuna salad - or a salmon salad, although I've never had one. I rarely eat crab and you certainly don't need to eat it on the EFI Diet.

I think you need more information on corn gluten. Does this mean you should avoid cornmeal or is corn gluten one of those things that turns up everywhere? Again, I eat cornmeal rarely on the EFI Diet and it is certainly not necessary to do so. I only eat oats in cookies and there are other cookies in the world. I thought alfalfa was something livestock ate.

I did a super-quick Google on lactalbumin and it looks like it's a whey protein found in the milk of all mammals. Since you should avoid dairy on the EFI Diet, that won't be a problem. (And it makes me wonder why someone is telling you to use butter.) No dairy, no sodas, no articial sweeteners are EFI guidelines. Egg whites are okay in EFI, but not the yolks. You need to find out why you're being told to avoid margarine and whether that prohibition includes soy margarines.

It looks to me like you can eat just about everything I eat except the chocolate desserts (sob). Here's an old post where I list some of the EFI-safe meals I eat. I didn't go back and double-check the ingredients, but from just a cursory look, I think you could eat everything listed there.

In your original post you ask if an attack could happen just an hour after eating something that triggered it. Oh, yeah. In fact, in one of Heather's books, she talks about having to leave the table before even finishing the food that was triggering the attack. Been there, done that, have the T-shirt.

I am sorry to hear about the surgery. I know that must be incredibly frightening to contemplate. My recommendation would be drugs, but it sounds like you've got that pretty much covered. Two suggestions in that regard. First, I assume that since you take Imodium you are IBS-D. There are some anti-depressants that help with D and some that don't help or may even hurt. If you'll post what type of anti-depressant you're on, someone on the Board might be familiar with its side-effects.

Second, ask your doctors for a sleeping pill. When I was dealing with serious illness and major treatments several years ago, I took Ambien and that helped me more than anything. Just knowing that at the end of the day I could actually get a good night's sleep made everything easier.

I hope some of this helps. Take care.

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[Research tells us fourteen out of any ten individuals likes chocolate. - Sandra Boynton]

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